I, like many of you, am one of the two billion people on Earth who live in cities. And there are days -- I don't know about the rest of you -- but there are days when I palpably feel how much I rely on other people for pretty much everything in my life. And some days, that can even be a little scary. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is how that same interdependence is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure that we can actually harness to help heal some of our deepest civic issues, if we apply open-source collaboration.
Ja sam, kao mnogi od vas, jedna od dvije milijarde ljudi na Zemlji koji žive u gradovima. I postoje dani -- ne znam kako je to kod vas -- no postoje dani kad opipljivo osjećam koliko se oslanjam na druge ljude za gotovo sve u svom životu. A u nekim danima to može biti i pomalo zastrašujuće. No ono o čemu ću govoriti danas je kako je upravo ta međuovisnost zapravo izuzetno jaka društvena infrastruktura koju bismo zapravo mogli iskoristiti da pomognemo riješiti neke od naših najdubljih građanskih problema, ako bismo primijenili otvorenu suradnju.
A couple of years ago, I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Pollan, in which he argued that growing even some of our own food is one of the best things that we can do for the environment. Now at the time that I was reading this, it was the middle of the winter and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt in my New York City apartment. So I was basically just willing to settle for just reading the next Wired magazine and finding out how the experts were going to figure out how to solve all these problems for us in the future. But that was actually exactly the point that Michael Pollan was making in this article -- it's precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all these things to specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system.
Prije nekoliko godina čitala sam članak Michaela Pollana u New York Timesu u kojem je tvrdio da je uzgoj čak i malo vlastite hrane jedna od najboljih stvari koju možemo učiniti za okoliš. U trenutku kada sam to čitala bila je sredina zime i ja definitivno nisam imala sobu za mnogo zemlje u svom newyorškom stanu. Tako da sam se upravo bila spremna zadovoljiti čitanjem novog broja časopisa Wired da vidim kako će stručnjaci za nas otkriti rješenje svih tih problema u budućnosti. No to je bilo upravo ono o čemu je Michael Pollan pisao u tom članku -- da upravo to kada prepuštamo odgovornost za sve te stvari specijalistima da uzrokujemo ovakvu zbrku
So, I happen to know a little bit from my own work
kakvu vidimo u prehrambenom sustavu.
about how NASA has been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space. And that you can actually get optimal nutritional yield by running a kind of high-quality liquid soil over plants' root systems. Now to a vegetable plant, my apartment has got to be about as foreign as outer space. But I can offer some natural light and year-round climate control.
Tako, ja slučajno znam ponešto iz vlastitog rada o tome kako NASA koristi hidropone za istraživanje rasta hrane u svemiru. I zapravo možete dobiti optimalan prehrambeni prinos tako da pokrenete visoko kvalitetnu vrstu otopine preko korijenskog sistema biljke. Sada za povrtnu biljku moj bi stan mogao biti jednako stran kao i svemir. Ali ja mogu ponuditi štogod prirodnog svjetla i kontrolu klime tijekom godine.
Fast-forward two years later: we now have window farms, which are vertical, hydroponic platforms for food-growing indoors. And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom, which periodically sends this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through plants' root systems that are suspended in clay pellets -- so there's no dirt involved. Now light and temperature vary with each window's microclimate, so a window farm requires a farmer, and she must decide what kind of crops she is going to put in her window farm, and whether she is going to feed her food organically.
Brzo naprijed, dvije godine poslije: imamo prozorska uzgajališta: to su vertikalni hidroponi sistemi za uzgoj hrane u zatvorenom prostoru. a način na koji radi je da postoji pumpa na dnu koja periodički šalje neke hranjive otopine do vrha koja tada kaplje dolje kroz sustav korijenja biljke koje je postavljeno u glinenim kuglicama -- tako da zemlja nije uključena. Svjetlo i temperatura variraju prema mikroklimi svakog prozora tako da prozorsko uzgajalište zahtjeva uzgajivača koji mora odlučiti kakve će kulture imati u svojem prozorskom uzgajalištu i hoće li svoju hranu organski hraniti.
Back at the time, a window farm was no more than a technically complex idea that was going to require a lot of testing. And I really wanted it to be an open project, because hydroponics is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the United States right now, and could possibly become another area like Monsanto, where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property in the way of people's food. So I decided that, instead of creating a product, what I was going to do was open this up to a whole bunch of codevelopers.
U to vrijeme prozorsko uzgajalište nije bilo više nego tehnički kompleksna ideja koja će zahtijevati mnogo testiranja. A ja sam stvarno željela da to bude otvoren projekt jer hidroponi su sada jedno od najbrže rastućih područja za patentiranje u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama i mogli bi postati još jedno područje kao korporacija Monsanto, gdje imamo mnogo korporacijskog intelektualnog vlasništva koje stoji na putu ljudskoj hrani. I tako sam odlučila da umjesto da stvaram produkt, otvoriti taj sistem velikoj grupi kooperanata.
The first few systems that we created, they kind of worked. We were actually able to grow about a salad a week in a typical New York City apartment window. And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff. But the first few systems were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved.
Nekoliko prvih sistema koje smo stvorili nekako su funkcionirali. Mogli smo čak uzgojiti jednu glavicu salate za oko tjedan dana na prozoru tipičnog newyorškog stana. Mogli smo uzgojiti i minirajčice, i krastavce, i još mnogošta. Ali nekoliko prvih sistema bili su propuštajući bučni žderači energije koje Martha Stewart nikad ne bi odobrila.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So to bring on more codevelopers, what we did was we created a social media site on which we published the designs, we explained how they worked, and we even went so far as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems. And then we invited people all over the world to build them and experiment with us. So actually now on this website, we have 18,000 people. And we have window farms all over the world.
Da bismo pridobili što više suradnika, stvorili smo društvenu internetsku mrežu na kojoj smo objavili nacrt, objasnili kako funkcionira, i išli smo čak tako daleko da smo naglasili što je u tim sistemima neispravno. I tada smo pozvali ljude iz cijelog svijeta da ih grade i da eksperimentiraju s nama. I sada doista na toj internetskoj stranici imamo 18.000 ljudi. I imamo prozorska uzgajališta po cijelom svijetu.
What we're doing is what NASA or a large corporation would call R&D, or research and development. But what we call it is R&D-I-Y, or "research and develop it yourself."
Ono što činimo NASA ili neki drugi veliki koncern bi nazvao I&R ili istraživanje i razvoj. Ali mi ga nazivamo I&R-uradi-sam ili istražuj i razvijaj ga sam.
(Laughter)
Na primjer,
So, for example, Jackson came along and suggested that we use air pumps instead of water pumps. It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right, but once we did, we were able to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half. Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments, like lots of other window farmers, and he's been able to get his strawberries to fruit for nine months of the year in low-light conditions by simply changing out the organic nutrients. And window farmers in Finland have been customizing their window farms for the dark days of the Finnish winters by outfitting them with LED grow lights that they're now making open source and part of the project.
Jackson je došao i predložio da koristimo zračne pumpe umjesto vodenih. Bilo je potrebno sastaviti mnogo sistema da bismo dobili jedan ispravan, ali kad smo to ostvarili, mogli smo smanjiti emisiju ugljika na polovicu. Tony u Chicagu provodio je eksperimente rasta, kao i mnogi drugi uzgajivači, i uspio je uzgojiti plodove jagoda devet mjeseci godišnje u uvjetima slabog osvjetljenja tako da je jednostavno promijenio organske nutrijente. A uzgajivači u Finskoj prilagođavali su svoja prozorska uzgajališta mračnim danima finske zime tako da su ih opremili s LED žaruljama, tako da su sada dio otvorene suradnje i dio projekta.
So window farms have been evolving through a rapid versioning process similar to software. And with every open source project, the real benefit is the interplay between the specific concerns of people customizing their systems for their own particular concerns, and the universal concerns. So my core team and I are able to concentrate on the improvements that really benefit everyone. And we're able to look out for the needs of newcomers.
Tako su se prozorska uzgajališta razvijala kroz rapidan proces različitih izvedbi slično kao kod softwarea. I sa svakim projektom otvorene suradnje stvarna korist je interakcija između specifičnih potreba ljudi koji prilagođavaju svoje sisteme vlastitim individualnim potrebama i univerzalnih potreba. Dakle moj uži tim i ja možemo se koncentrirati na poboljšanja koja doista doprinose svima. I u stanju smo paziti na potrebe pridošlica.
So for do-it-yourselfers, we provide free, very well-tested instructions so that anyone, anywhere around the world, can build one of these systems for free. And there's a patent pending on these systems as well that's held by the community. And to fund the project, we partner to create products that we then sell to schools and to individuals who don't have time to build their own systems.
Stoga za one koji će sistem raditi u kućnoj radinosti osiguravamo besplatna, vrlo dobro testirana uputstva tako da bilo tko, bilo gdje na svijetu može ovaj sistem izraditi besplatno. A tu je i zaštićeni patent na tim sustavima koji je u posjedu zajednice. Da bismo financirali projekt, ulazimo u partnerstva kako bismo kreirali produkte koje potom prodajemo školama i pojedincima, koji nemaju vremena za gradnju vlastitih sistema.
Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is support for our own work, as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs. But I think that Eleen expresses best what we really get out of this, which is the actual joy of collaboration. So she expresses here what it's like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing. If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change that we're all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term "consumer" and get behind the people who are doing stuff.
U našoj zajednici sada je nastala jedna određena kultura. U našoj je kulturi bolje biti ispitivač koji podržava ideju drugoga, nego biti samo onaj koji ima ideju. Što smo dobili iz ovog projekta je podrška za vlastiti rad kao i iskustvo stvarnog doprinosa pokretu za očuvanje okoliša koji je drugačiji od toga da samo stavimo nove žarulje. No mislim da Eileen izražava najbolje što doista dobivamo iz ovoga, a to je zapravo radost suradnje. Pa tako ona ovdje izražava kako je to kad vidiš nekoga tko je s druge strane svijeta uzeo tvoju ideju, nadogradio je i tada ti priznao tvoj doprinos. Ako zaista želimo da se promijeni priroda konzumerskog ponašanja o kojoj svi mi govorimo kao ekolozi i uživatelji hrane, možda samo moramo odbaciti pojam konzument i pomoći ljudima koji štogod poduzimaju.
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own. And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs into solar panels and aquaponic systems. And we're building upon innovations of generations who went before us. And we're looking ahead at generations who really need us to retool our lives now. So we ask that you join us in rediscovering the value of citizens united, and to declare that we are all still pioneers.
Projekti otvorene suradnje teže svojem trenutku. I ono što opažamo je da se I&R-uradi-sam razvio izvan jednostavnih prozorskih uzgajališta i LED žarulja u sisteme sa solarnim kolektorima i akvaponije. Mi nadograđujemo inovacije prijašnjih generacija. I pripremamo se za generacije koje nas doista trebaju da sada iznova opremimo naše živote. Pa vas pozivamo da nam se pridružite u ponovnom otkrivanju vrijednosti ujedinjenog građanstva i da objavimo da smo u ovome svi mi još uvijek pioniri.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)