TED Community » Leif Thor

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An idea worth spreading

There is enough resources and through modern technology, the long held history of a "Me or You" world is ending. Now to survive, we must embrace a "Me & You" world view.

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Using Nature's R&D for creating abundant life for all humanity

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• TEDCred score: +0.90 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +6

  A comment on Talk: Bonnie Bassler: How bacteria "talk"

  Feb 25 2012: I've seen hundreds of inspiring talks on TED Talks, but Bonnie's on Bacteria takes the cake. I used to think I was smart knowing a little how vast the insect world is, but now I see we are all just children, just at the front, the beginning of understanding anything about our home. We are also incredibly trapped within our size scale. Things too small to see we don't unless aided with machinery. Things too large to wrap our heads around, where we can see it in plain view, but when presented the scale of its size, our eyes go glassy. We become better and better at bringing light to these different scales, but for the most part, they can never enter our daily lives, because well, they're out of sight, and out of mind.
  
  If bacteria speak to one another, showing us yet another way life does it's amazing thing, what if we scale the other way. Could planets be alive, and we just haven't evolved geology enough yet to see it. Anyone thinking geology is dead where bacteria is alive, we're just beginning to learn our universe around us, less than 100 years of serious exploration. Those in another hundred years are likely to laugh at our 21st Century lack of understanding of the Universe around us.
  
  Bonnie you rock!

• A comment on Talk: Garth Lenz: The true cost of oil

  Feb 23 2012: I grew up with woods in my back yard. More and more people are growing up in cities. Growing up in a city is going to change how you think about nature. I've never thought of nature as "important". To me it's always been what keeps all of us here breathing, you know...alive. I wish I could express the sadness of humanity's loosing it's touch with reality, as if this is some kind of game show than can be run again when it goes belly up. Take a breath in... Did you enjoy that breath? Not enough carbon scrubbers or what our grandparents called plants, you don't get your breath.
  
  I tried to get a job up there. Met a guy who made $6,000 a day. I would have taken the job, and all I could think watching this talk was how the drivers could do such damage and still feel human, and yet I was almost one.

• A comment on Conversation: How would an economic system not based on the acquisition of material wealth work?

  Jan 22 2012: Great question, I'm working on just such a project. Understanding history's patterns, are key to understanding a solution. There are certain human truths in human behavior, and two big ones are acquisition, and leveraging. The acquisition part came from our very distant ancestors, and from when we were scavengers, before we were hunters. The scavenger lives within us all still, and like our ancestors we all feel a sense of whole by surrounding ourselves with "our stuff, or stuff that shows who we are". Modern marketing began capitalizing on this in the 20th Century, and making it such an art, by 1975 we were hopelessly following an invisible trumpet where the goal of self is to constantly acquire more constantly updating to others our unique self's individuality. The main reason was to distract us from politics, so everyone's religion becomes this never ending quest to explore self. "the Century of Self" on YouTube says all this much better than I ever could...
  
  Leveraging is something all animals practice, mostly cause it helps keep us alive, but the heart of leveraging is this beautiful natural laziness. Any animal prefers not working to get something as opposed to working for it. This is also Nature's way of problem solving, in that the easiest way is the most efficient way, and Nature loves efficiency.
  
  How do these relate to an alternative economy where material wealth isn't the goal? It turns out for nearly 95,000 years human beings practiced gift economics, which is the opposite of capitalism. Capitalism means to "capitalize or gain height through standing on others shoulders", or to "capitalize over". Gift economics was successfully practiced for so long because we were still moving or nomadic. Once we settled and began growing things, villages grew and the City State was born. The project I'm working on will greatly reduce the leverage city state cultures have over people turning us back in to a peer to peer free culture. leifthor (dot) wordpress (dot) com

• A comment on Talk: Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex

  Jul 22 2011: Failure or trial and error is essential along any path to success.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

  Jun 3 2011: Looking down the road of OSE's future (as it's now in it's early stages)
  
  Open Source Ecology offers the localisation of civilisation's 50 machines/systems/artifacts that make up the industrial end of civilization maximising genuine growth potential in any community.
  
  Open Source Ecology is any community's fastest way of becoming more self sufficient and effective while reducing costs, workload, and waste concurrently.
  
  An economic model not requiring continual never ending growth expectations, Open Source Ecology stands ready to transform any community around the world quickly through redefining economic wealth. This is done by redistributing profit and power back to the community while increasing off time by localising industry cycles.
  
  Doing more with Less as the economic model, Open Source Ecology stands to transform any community quickly tangibly generating real profit immediately back to the community.
  
  The best parts of OSE haven't been conceptualized as yet, since as an entirely new form of economics, the benefits are quite literally limitless and therefore unforeseeable.
  
  Looking 10 years forward to 2021---
  Imagine going online to choose which phone design you want of the 400 or so OSE unique designs that have been donated by design teams around the world during 2020's global OSE phone design contest. Not just outside look but everything inside too. Then once you know which design you want (which is provided free) you need to choose who you'd like to build it for you. There's Tom down the street, or Nancy's phones on the other side of town. Nancy's is a little more expensive though they're put together with a little more care, and of course built for a lifetime (allowing for upgrades) and so you send the order in to Nancy's and a week later, you pick up your phone designed by a team in Norway who's never met Nancy or been in her shop, but the two are interdependent on each other. This is one of hundreds of possibilities that will come out of OSE
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Should TED allow demonstrations of military equipment and uniform on the TED stage?

  Mar 30 2011: Even if I'm against the concept of a military, as a citizen, I should always stay informed as to the might and especially the technology of the military of my country. To know how well it can supposedly protect me from harm's way, but equally is to know should I ever wish to protest within my country so I know what forces I'd be up against were they to turn on me, as many country's military tend to do when confronted by hostile population.
  
  Example, would you protest were you to hear the military was replacing all personel with drones completely? Sounds good if you're on the good guy end, but it would be deadly to a group of citizens wanting to protest who are put down not by people in uniforms who have a chance at having a conscious, but by machines with as much will as a corporation has consciousness.
  
  Remember, money was created for the purpose of taxation. Who stands to benefit the most from money's creation, those forced to use it, or those who control printing it?