Tim-Rasmus Kiehl

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Rasmus Kiehl (Toronto, Canada)

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[edit] Team Culturing Information

last updated: 4. May 2012

[edit] WHO are you?

(to follow)

1992-1998 University of Lübeck, Germany - Medicine
1999-2001 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles - postdoc neurogenetics
2001-2003 Stanford University and Hospital - residency, anatomic pathology
2003-2005 Harvard University / Mass General Hospital - neuropathology
2006-pres. University of Toronto - medical faculty (Lab. Med. and Pathobiol. Dept.)
2006-pres. University Health Network - clinical appointment

[edit] WHY are you motivated to support/develop this work?

For sure. There was a time in the 19th century when organic chemistry was open source and done by amateurs who shared their experimental results freely. It was a time of extreme and rapid innovation. We need that same spirit again. The patent system is broken.

I can bring my academic and international background to the table. Healthcare and bioscience are aspects that are sorely lacking in the current OSE proposal (one thing at a time, OK I get it). As I became more and more of a wiki bee here, I learned so much stuff about topics that I knew relatively little about, such as engineering, agriculture, electronics, fabbing - just by reading and editing the wiki.

Yes, I love teaching.

For sure.

Use yes, build probably not. If someone gives me an unassembled GVCS product, I can probably put it together, a la Ikea.

Likely in the agricultural sphere, but not quite yet. When TSHTF, I will. Come to think of it, I realize that that's not very far off, so I better get started... we are in the early stages of The Long Emergency.

Sure, let's keep the wealth within the community and develop locally adapted innovations.

Yes, I see great potential there. Needs local people of course, who are interested in adapting the technologies.

Yes, that's the goal.

This is one of the most important aspects of regaining personal freedom.

Yes, absolutely. I am academically-based, so that's what I do. Have written countless academic papers, book chapters and other work.

For sure. Land "development" by permaculture and biochar seems especially promising.

Let's take back the economy.

Yes. I keep joking "I want to be an oil man... with BIO-OIL of course !". Bio-oil is made during the pyrolysis of biomass. It is a very cheap raw material. Biochar, syngas and heat are other useful products generated in the process.

More than just bug-out. I plan to be in a resilient agrarian community when TSHTF, i.e. soon.

By allowing people to opt out of the current system. By de-financializing the economy. The wholesale financialization of the larger and global economy is one of the main problems underlying the financial crisis, everything else (subprime, banksters,... etc.) is only a symptom. We need to bring back the local and household economy. It's fine to financialize local economies and will likely actually improve them (example: it's OK to have financial derivative products for locally traded goods and services). But when a whole global economy is financialized, many problems get shifted across the globe, since they don't have to be dealth with on a local level anymore. I am also very interested in resource-backed local currencies (land-backed, food-backed, biochar-backed, time-backed, energy-backed, etc...); related topic: radical homemakers.

It creates alternatives to current technologies and international markets. The modern steam engine makes solar and biomass power available to perform mechanical tasks, which means that our extreme reliance on conflict-prone fossil fuels is reduced. And don't even get me started on the global instabilities introduced by atmospheric carbon overload...

I am not sure that there is such a thing as overpopulation. There certainly is over-consumption in all industrialized countries. At the current level of western-style consumption, the planet can support about 1.2B people. This means that we are going deeper and deeper into ecological debt. At the lifestyle level of the average Rwandan, the planet could support about 15 billion people sustainably. So with very different living arrangements, this number could change dramatically. With high-tech neo-subsistence, the planet could support perhaps 10 billion people while most natural habitats are left untouched and intact.

So let's ask the question again in a way that it was meant (I think): "How can the GVCS slow population growth given current trends ?"
1.) By improving education. That is the most important (and only ?) strategy that has worked in the past to address overpopulation. Education is required to achieve high-tech neo-subsistence.
2.) By allowing us to live in places where few people live (example: Oceansource - living in the world's coastal deserts). Let's be clear: there is still plenty of room on the planet. We crowd along the world's coasts and in places where fertile agricultural land is (or used to be), because that's where we historically had to live. But we can certainly live in places that aren't so hospitable, where there is plenty of stranded solar and other energy, and give the more sensitive eco-habitats back to nature. Sprawl is mostly bad, cities are (potentially) good. Read Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline", he speaks the truth !
3.) By letting our entire civilization "live lower on the food chain" (Michael Pollan). Read Marcin's calculations for the herbivore tractor to see what I mean.

The improved overall (systemic) efficiency afforded by product ecologies (or synergies) means that we can more easily live within the confines of solar energy, if that's what we choose to do.

- A while ago I read somewhere "the smaller the scale at which you want to do something, the further back you have to go in technological development" (source eludes me). This is true in a way, but let's not forget that we can add advancements from unrelated fields to everything (infotech comes to mind). Or, to take an OSE example: steam engine yes, but with an Arduino brain.

- We can make most things but not all things. We're not going to replace Intel, Apple and Pfizer any time soon. There will still be highly specialized products, highly complex, rigorous quality control, large scale production, traded globally ("Made in Germany" perhaps). But the other 95% of things, we can produce by ourselves.

- I would like to see discussion about "alternative" GVCSs. The initial set of selected products makes sense, but it is just one arbitrary set out of a large number of possible combinations. It is very heavy on machinery and metals. Some communities may decide that they want to build an advanced civilization on very different materials and technologies. As mentioned above, bioscience is IMHO under-represented here. This is unfortunate and I wonder if it has something to do with the long-standing demonization of biotech by the environmental community in general. It will take some time to get over that. Fortunately, some groups, like the folks over at DIYBioor the iGEM competition, are demonstrating that biotech does not have to be corporate-owned and evil. This is important work, but needs to become much broader. The anti-GMO folks need to get a grip and understand that massive genetic modifications of crops and animals have been done over the 10,000 years since we started domesticating them. In comparison, the recent, very targeted genetic modifications introduce just minor additional changes that don't have nearly as much of an effect on the overall biology of the organism as the hundreds of older "natural" mutations that we have been selecting for. The people who argue most strongly against biotech most often don't have a sufficient background or even interest in biology to understand it;... this is green dogma, I can see it for what it is and am not afraid to speak out against it. The public is being misled by a handful of corrupt, perhaps bought-off, highly vocal activists who are denying us planet-saving technology that we so desperately need. Organic ag plus GMOs = now we're talking sustainable agriculture.

[edit] WHAT

I am a wiki worker, and have enjoyed putting together many pages. A good number of them were also transwikified to Appropedia (examples: biochar, micromining, low-cost diagnostics, duckweed...). Mobilized all my contacts for the MAKE contest (Dec. 2010). Financial support (ChipIn! button) over and above my contributions as a True Fan. Countless emails to Marcin.

Scientist and therefore science writer. Unsurprisingly, have written many papers, grants, presentations, what have you...

I am one of the founders of Biochar Ontario (founded in 2009), a not-for-profit focused on biochar. During the dot-com era, had a small start-up focused on providing medical information to surgical patients.

not familiar with programming

Written business plans, that's it.

Not very familiar but immensely interested (architectural, industrial, etc.). That's why I spend so much time on the OSE wiki.

Not very familiar with most of these. I have made extensive architectural designs but lack formal training in this. Techniques like Guastavino tile construction or basalt fibers as construction materials really fascinate me.

[edit] HOW can you help?

mostly via ChipIn, and more wiki work.

Not currently.

No.

Yes, absolutely.

No.

I was one of the first to sign up, back in early 2009.

Can't right now.

Yes.

Yes, this sounds terrific. But the people planning this should keep in mind that many (most?) community efforts in the past have failed. See: this Peak Moment episode for what happens to ecovillages, for example. If done on a larger scale, the work of Paul Romer on Charter Cities is very relevant.

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