“Technology is the active human interface with the material world. But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources. This is not an acceptable use of the word.”

- Ursula Le Guin

If human driven climate change is an emergency, even a slow disaster, we don’t think it’s wrong to think of it as a technological disaster. In doing so, however, we put ourselves in danger of a bad analysis, as those that wish to uniformly dismiss technology are making either fantastical claims or no claim at all. The view that would restrict the term to digital tech slips quickly into primitivist fantasy, assigning a magical exceptionalism to well understood material systems. Its flip side is an escapist view of digital computing as access to an immaterial realm, a kind of nouveau manifest destiny that would hold the earth as redundant. The solution is to reframe the discourse, rid ourselves of a badly analyzed composite and bring some realism into the room.

We understand the digital as an embedded material process, a tool on equal ground with affective and social technologies of emotional care, coordination, artistic expression, as well as material technologies like construction, horticulture, insulation, “paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills.” To our mind, what makes a technology retrograde is not its placement on some spectrum of lo-tech to hi — the permaculture movement offers countless examples of avant-garde technologies that require little more than a shovel or a steel drum. Technologies that will avoid becoming obsolete are those that account for the real material embeddedness of their effects. From this perspective, the permaculture movement is a prime example of technology on the bleeding edge.

Regenerative technologies tend to emphasize emergence and self-organization; they apply holistic models and systems thinking that, at their best, can foster antifragile feedback loops. In material systems, this can mean decentralization of function and energy input. On the scale of social technologies, it means cultivating distributed autonomy. If I cultivate safety and empowerment in my community, I can throw away the steel fence and surveillance equipment.

On the contrary, extractive technologies tend to use illusory or irreal closed system models to justify material behaviors with wide-reaching (and often even self-defeating) negative effects. They generate pro-fragile feedback loops of increasing insecurity and complacency, often to the point where negative externalities threaten the technology itself. When the degraded strength of the social or material web no longer aids exploitation, the downward spiral is done. The only option is to flee.

The logical path of extractive technology takes these three stages: degradation, exploitation and exit. Brought to the macro level, the logic leads to a catch-22 that betrays the incoherence of the system in the first place: when extraction is global in scope, there is no means of exit. As we arrive at this impasse as a global civilization, it’s becoming painfully evident that extractive technologies must rely on anti-realist or even supernatural beliefs (infinite natural resources, martian colonies, manifest destiny) to fit any rational standard of holistic efficacy. For us realists, the answer is clear: extractive tech is ineffectual, even absurd. Regenerative technology is effective technology.

Portland, for all its fraught history, has been a hub for realist technology in the late twentieth and twenty first century, from community organizing, civil disobedience and protest strategies to modern revisions of the adequate technology and permaculture movements to blockchain and open source. We’ve been home to visionaries of regenerative thinking like Paul Stamets, Ursula Le Guin and Toby Hemenway. Today our city hosts a unique enthusiasm for environmental progress, but it stands to be overshadowed by an unaddressed history of racial injustice, colonial violence and gentrification, all compounded by a reinvigorated, greenwashed tide of extractive development. Defenders of realism and justice need to dig in.

In that spirit, we’re announcing the Portland Regen Commons, a work share, event and community space for regenerative technology in all its social, organizational, material and digital forms. Regenerative finance and permaculture are the two frameworks we are currently most engaged in, but as we expand, we hope other design-vectors and practices will join. This includes the locale-based solutions journalism that will be crucial in weaving together networks of climate solidarity, those working in org design and platform cooperativism, and the expansive mutual aid networks already in place in this town.

In establishing this commons, we want to assert the simple necessity of the regenerative turn, the local presence and emphasis which is that turn’s call, and the expansive vision of technology it advocates — tech as not simply a digital practice, but an array of organizational, agricultural, artistic and material modes for mutual empowerment and practical realism.

We’re looking for partners, participants and funders, so if you’re interested, please get in touch or contribute to our starter fund pool at pdxregencommons.eth.

If you’re local, check our twitter for announcements about our first local meetup.

collect://

“Technology is the active human interface with the material world. But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources. This is not an acceptable use of the word.”

- Ursula Le Guin

If human driven climate change is an emergency, even a slow disaster, we don’t think it’s wrong to think of it as a technological disaster. In doing so, however, we put ourselves in danger of a bad analysis, as those that wish to uniformly dismiss technology are making either fantastical claims or no claim at all. The view that would restrict the term to digital tech slips quickly into primitivist fantasy, assigning a magical exceptionalism to well understood material systems. Its flip side is an escapist view of digital computing as access to an immaterial realm, a kind of nouveau manifest destiny that would hold the earth as redundant. The solution is to reframe the discourse, rid ourselves of a badly analyzed composite and bring some realism into the room.

We understand the digital as an embedded material process, a tool on equal ground with affective and social technologies of emotional care, coordination, artistic expression, as well as material technologies like construction, horticulture, insulation, “paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills.” To our mind, what makes a technology retrograde is not its placement on some spectrum of lo-tech to hi — the permaculture movement offers countless examples of avant-garde technologies that require little more than a shovel or a steel drum. Technologies that will avoid becoming obsolete are those that account for the real material embeddedness of their effects. From this perspective, the permaculture movement is a prime example of technology on the bleeding edge.

Regenerative technologies tend to emphasize emergence and self-organization; they apply holistic models and systems thinking that, at their best, can foster antifragile feedback loops. In material systems, this can mean decentralization of function and energy input. On the scale of social technologies, it means cultivating distributed autonomy. If I cultivate safety and empowerment in my community, I can throw away the steel fence and surveillance equipment.

On the contrary, extractive technologies tend to use illusory or irreal closed system models to justify material behaviors with wide-reaching (and often even self-defeating) negative effects. They generate pro-fragile feedback loops of increasing insecurity and complacency, often to the point where negative externalities threaten the technology itself. When the degraded strength of the social or material web no longer aids exploitation, the downward spiral is done. The only option is to flee.

The logical path of extractive technology takes these three stages: degradation, exploitation and exit. Brought to the macro level, the logic leads to a catch-22 that betrays the incoherence of the system in the first place: when extraction is global in scope, there is no means of exit. As we arrive at this impasse as a global civilization, it’s becoming painfully evident that extractive technologies must rely on anti-realist or even supernatural beliefs (infinite natural resources, martian colonies, manifest destiny) to fit any rational standard of holistic efficacy. For us realists, the answer is clear: extractive tech is ineffectual, even absurd. Regenerative technology is effective technology.

Portland, for all its fraught history, has been a hub for realist technology in the late twentieth and twenty first century, from community organizing, civil disobedience and protest strategies to modern revisions of the adequate technology and permaculture movements to blockchain and open source. We’ve been home to visionaries of regenerative thinking like Paul Stamets, Ursula Le Guin and Toby Hemenway. Today our city hosts a unique enthusiasm for environmental progress, but it stands to be overshadowed by an unaddressed history of racial injustice, colonial violence and gentrification, all compounded by a reinvigorated, greenwashed tide of extractive development. Defenders of realism and justice need to dig in.

In that spirit, we’re announcing the Portland Regen Commons, a work share, event and community space for regenerative technology in all its social, organizational, material and digital forms. Regenerative finance and permaculture are the two frameworks we are currently most engaged in, but as we expand, we hope other design-vectors and practices will join. This includes the locale-based solutions journalism that will be crucial in weaving together networks of climate solidarity, those working in org design and platform cooperativism, and the expansive mutual aid networks already in place in this town.

In establishing this commons, we want to assert the simple necessity of the regenerative turn, the local presence and emphasis which is that turn’s call, and the expansive vision of technology it advocates — tech as not simply a digital practice, but an array of organizational, agricultural, artistic and material modes for mutual empowerment and practical realism.

We’re looking for partners, participants and funders, so if you’re interested, please get in touch or contribute to our starter fund pool at pdxregencommons.eth.

If you’re local, check our twitter for announcements about our first local meetup.

collect://