[Motomorgen]

Could you share which TED talk? My wife and I are about to buy a house with the hopes of turning the land into a permaculture food forest and I've been trying to find a way to leverage my development skills to bolster the farm skills as well!

[mooreds]

I have taken a couple of permaculture courses and am also a developer. The biggest synergy between the two is system thinking. In both domains, you are thinking at multiple levels of abstraction, bouncing back and forth between the high level design and low level implementation.

Highly recommended: Thinking in Systems: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/...

And the permaculture podcast covers a variety of interesting topics: http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/

[sunshiney]

I chuckled when I read your ask. Here I have people who say "Ted Talks??" and that is followed with me now memorized elevator speech describing Ted Talks. It's refreshing to not have to explain.

The talk I watched a couple of times as I thought through bringing its message here is "This computer will grow your Food in the future." https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_gr...

Very, very cool stuff. I want to get that into the K-12 school here (170 students) and recently renovated to the tune of $11 million, interestingly enough.

I also got a connection going with some start-up folks in Utah who are creating rural hubs to train and employ locals for remote opps in urban settings. They've got a 4-man team going that seems to be gathering steam. At least, they pant a lot when talking with them. :-)

And I also have been digging into 3D material advancements beyond plastic (thankfully happening) and robotic combines. One guy converted a John Deere combine using $6k into a driverless combine used in wheat fields.

The Ted Talk was particularly cool, though, because it demo'd how people in many aspects of tech had "become" farmers -- integrating their tech prowess with growing plants that feed.

I watched on C-span not long ago a panel talk on how Obama brought in private sector, highly skilled tech folks into a temporary program that is aimed at vastly overhauling/improving the tech aspects of the federal government. One of the leads said that after being at it awhile, he concluded that the biggest challenge was changing the culture.

That's hitting it on the nail head for me...same thing I have here.

My crazy ass vision is that when I see the congestion on highways, lack of neighborliness, poor air quality, lack of connection to nature (so important to me) versus the opposite features here that I believe people would be far happier, less stressed, kinder if they could live more rural -- despite present day shuffle to live urban. Now the vision is that if we could use tech and fiber to connect people with great paying jobs and up their skills at online marketing -- growth hacking, so to speak -- then maybe we could spread the burgeoning population out and over the land, rather than having it so concentrated in cities. I know that not everyone will find this lifestyle cool but there are those who do.

I can work all day and head down to a huge river 15 minutes away and fish all evening, think on what has happened during the day.. dream... and imagine.

I have been envisioning a tech center here where I would be able to mingle with people who talk my language and who are innovative. I want to have rural kids learning to code and to see how it can impact their rural farm lives...and that everyone need not leave for the city.

I live in this great place.. take a look at southviewliving.com to get a glimpse.

So...I know..I know.. I'm a crazy older woman. But ah well.. I still have way too much thrust and energy to waste it with things like retirement. :-)

Whatcha think?