Sporulation (take 2)

Some organisms create spores when the environment starts to get stressful. (See previous post for comments.)

Concept

The Final Edition was to be a compilation of open documentation that would be explicitly made available to newspapers all over the world, so that they would be able to use the last drops of civilization's ink to provide “survival and better” content to everyone, in paper format.

A bit like medieval monasteries: you collect important knowledge in safe places, and keep it ready to spread as soon as the outer atmosphere changes again to make new growth possible.

Link to Linus Torvald's quote on “real men don't make backups”.

When I read “Earth Abides” - in which the main character decides it's not read-and-write skills that will make the most difference, but arrow-and-bow skills, transferred as fun games - I thought I'd include Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking tools.

Now that we might include:

Pandemic related:

• The Citizen's Manual (FluWiki)
• Get Pandemic Ready
• Ready Moms
• Gupta's Severe Pandemic

Non-pandemic related:

• Appropedia
  
• Where there's no doctor
• Wireless Networks for the Developing World
• ...
  

Alex suggested an etherpad.org instance to collect links.

Format/medium

1. Computers are thought to be the default place to stick the knowledge into.
2. Some have tried to print the whole of Wikipedia, creating a paper version.
3. A combined approach, like The Final Edition idea, is used by the “2 pager docs” by Whoever He Is [ask Vinay]: keep it in files, but by all means make it rapidly printable just in case.
4. Of course, the availability and size of external drives makes it possible to keep maybe 1 terabyte of data, making copies into other people's disks in a distributed network. What exactly? See previous point.
   

Ale suggests its own operating system.

Zemby suggests solar panels.

Random next steps

I may restructure my storage into 3 kinds of folders/directories:

• Private (birthday pictures and the like).
• Action (getting things done, given that life goes on regardless of perceived risk).
• Spores (the kind of things I'd share with others in a network of sporulation).

A couple of external drives would act as memories.

Once it's started, anyone can ask friends to keep at least partial copies, here and there.

Streamline the whole process: what to keep, how to keep it, how to transfer it to other places, and how to de-sporulate, translation.