WEBVTT

00:00:00.888 --> 00:00:02.769
I, like many of you,

00:00:02.793 --> 00:00:08.840
am one of the two billion people
on Earth who live in cities.

00:00:09.475 --> 00:00:12.390
And there are days --
I don't know about the rest of you --

00:00:12.414 --> 00:00:15.976
but there are days when I palpably feel

00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.477
how much I rely on other people

00:00:18.501 --> 00:00:20.854
for pretty much everything in my life.

00:00:21.349 --> 00:00:24.013
And some days, that can even
be a little scary.

00:00:24.694 --> 00:00:26.778
But what I'm here
to talk to you about today

00:00:26.802 --> 00:00:29.584
is how that same interdependence

00:00:29.608 --> 00:00:34.097
is actually an extremely
powerful social infrastructure

00:00:34.121 --> 00:00:36.105
that we can actually harness

00:00:36.129 --> 00:00:40.540
to help heal some
of our deepest civic issues,

00:00:40.564 --> 00:00:44.281
if we apply open-source collaboration.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:44.988 --> 00:00:46.332
A couple of years ago,

00:00:46.356 --> 00:00:49.854
I read an article by New York Times
writer Michael Pollan,

00:00:49.878 --> 00:00:53.977
in which he argued that growing
even some of our own food

00:00:54.001 --> 00:00:57.171
is one of the best things
that we can do for the environment.

00:00:58.036 --> 00:00:59.941
Now at the time that I was reading this,

00:00:59.965 --> 00:01:01.606
it was the middle of the winter

00:01:01.630 --> 00:01:04.937
and I definitely did not have room
for a lot of dirt

00:01:04.961 --> 00:01:07.090
in my New York City apartment.

00:01:07.114 --> 00:01:09.080
So I was basically just willing to settle

00:01:09.104 --> 00:01:11.050
for just reading the next Wired magazine

00:01:11.074 --> 00:01:13.694
and finding out how the experts
were going to figure out

00:01:13.718 --> 00:01:16.794
how to solve all these problems
for us in the future.

00:01:16.818 --> 00:01:19.067
But that was actually exactly the point

00:01:19.091 --> 00:01:21.377
that Michael Pollan
was making in this article --

00:01:21.401 --> 00:01:23.610
it's precisely when we hand over

00:01:23.634 --> 00:01:26.876
the responsibility
for all these things to specialists

00:01:26.900 --> 00:01:30.614
that we cause the kind of messes
that we see with the food system.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:35.334
So, I happen to know
a little bit from my own work

00:01:35.358 --> 00:01:39.613
about how NASA has been using hydroponics

00:01:39.637 --> 00:01:42.352
to explore growing food in space.

00:01:42.884 --> 00:01:47.299
And that you can actually
get optimal nutritional yield

00:01:47.323 --> 00:01:53.063
by running a kind of high-quality
liquid soil over plants' root systems.

00:01:53.931 --> 00:01:55.516
Now to a vegetable plant,

00:01:55.540 --> 00:02:00.026
my apartment has got to be
about as foreign as outer space.

00:02:00.050 --> 00:02:02.511
But I can offer some natural light

00:02:02.535 --> 00:02:04.555
and year-round climate control.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:05.230 --> 00:02:06.926
Fast-forward two years later:

00:02:06.950 --> 00:02:08.674
we now have window farms,

00:02:08.698 --> 00:02:10.751
which are vertical, hydroponic platforms

00:02:10.775 --> 00:02:13.093
for food-growing indoors.

00:02:13.624 --> 00:02:16.379
And the way it works
is that there's a pump at the bottom,

00:02:16.403 --> 00:02:19.956
which periodically sends this liquid
nutrient solution up to the top,

00:02:19.980 --> 00:02:22.624
which then trickles down
through plants' root systems

00:02:22.648 --> 00:02:24.789
that are suspended in clay pellets --

00:02:24.813 --> 00:02:26.466
so there's no dirt involved.

00:02:27.307 --> 00:02:32.014
Now light and temperature vary
with each window's microclimate,

00:02:32.038 --> 00:02:35.796
so a window farm requires a farmer,

00:02:35.820 --> 00:02:37.317
and she must decide

00:02:37.341 --> 00:02:41.076
what kind of crops she is going
to put in her window farm,

00:02:41.100 --> 00:02:45.009
and whether she is going
to feed her food organically.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:45.033 --> 00:02:46.184
Back at the time,

00:02:46.208 --> 00:02:49.389
a window farm was no more
than a technically complex idea

00:02:49.413 --> 00:02:51.604
that was going to require
a lot of testing.

00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.750
And I really wanted it
to be an open project,

00:02:54.774 --> 00:02:55.976
because hydroponics

00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.716
is one of the fastest
growing areas of patenting

00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:00.402
in the United States right now,

00:03:00.426 --> 00:03:04.097
and could possibly become
another area like Monsanto,

00:03:04.121 --> 00:03:07.161
where we have a lot of corporate
intellectual property

00:03:07.185 --> 00:03:09.510
in the way of people's food.

00:03:10.112 --> 00:03:13.735
So I decided that,
instead of creating a product,

00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:14.926
what I was going to do

00:03:14.950 --> 00:03:18.000
was open this up
to a whole bunch of codevelopers.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:19.359 --> 00:03:22.121
The first few systems that we created,
they kind of worked.

00:03:22.145 --> 00:03:24.479
We were actually able to grow
about a salad a week

00:03:24.503 --> 00:03:26.893
in a typical New York City
apartment window.

00:03:26.917 --> 00:03:28.946
And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes

00:03:28.970 --> 00:03:30.950
and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff.

00:03:30.974 --> 00:03:32.453
But the first few systems

00:03:32.477 --> 00:03:36.008
were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers

00:03:36.032 --> 00:03:38.790
that Martha Stewart
would definitely never have approved.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:38.814 --> 00:03:40.662
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:40.686 --> 00:03:43.071
So to bring on more codevelopers,

00:03:43.095 --> 00:03:45.997
what we did was we created
a social media site

00:03:46.021 --> 00:03:47.966
on which we published the designs,

00:03:47.990 --> 00:03:49.984
we explained how they worked,

00:03:50.008 --> 00:03:52.387
and we even went so far

00:03:52.411 --> 00:03:55.655
as to point out everything
that was wrong with these systems.

00:03:55.679 --> 00:03:58.047
And then we invited people
all over the world

00:03:58.071 --> 00:04:00.167
to build them and experiment with us.

00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:03.523
So actually now on this website,

00:04:03.547 --> 00:04:06.244
we have 18,000 people.

00:04:06.268 --> 00:04:09.698
And we have window farms
all over the world.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:10.441 --> 00:04:14.213
What we're doing
is what NASA or a large corporation

00:04:14.237 --> 00:04:17.728
would call R&D,
or research and development.

00:04:17.752 --> 00:04:20.665
But what we call it is R&D-I-Y,

00:04:20.689 --> 00:04:23.328
or "research and develop it yourself."

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:23.352 --> 00:04:24.824
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:24.848 --> 00:04:27.403
So, for example, Jackson came along

00:04:27.427 --> 00:04:30.578
and suggested that we use air pumps
instead of water pumps.

00:04:30.602 --> 00:04:33.317
It took building a whole bunch
of systems to get it right,

00:04:33.341 --> 00:04:37.113
but once we did, we were able to cut
our carbon footprint nearly in half.

00:04:37.874 --> 00:04:40.858
Tony in Chicago has been taking on
growing experiments,

00:04:40.882 --> 00:04:42.536
like lots of other window farmers,

00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:45.523
and he's been able to get
his strawberries to fruit

00:04:45.547 --> 00:04:48.306
for nine months of the year
in low-light conditions

00:04:48.330 --> 00:04:51.307
by simply changing out
the organic nutrients.

00:04:52.281 --> 00:04:56.655
And window farmers in Finland
have been customizing their window farms

00:04:56.679 --> 00:04:59.019
for the dark days of the Finnish winters

00:04:59.043 --> 00:05:01.120
by outfitting them with LED grow lights

00:05:01.144 --> 00:05:04.437
that they're now making
open source and part of the project.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:04.461 --> 00:05:06.830
So window farms have been evolving

00:05:06.854 --> 00:05:10.144
through a rapid versioning process
similar to software.

00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:13.309
And with every open source project,

00:05:13.333 --> 00:05:15.047
the real benefit is the interplay

00:05:15.071 --> 00:05:19.510
between the specific concerns
of people customizing their systems

00:05:19.534 --> 00:05:21.353
for their own particular concerns,

00:05:21.377 --> 00:05:23.425
and the universal concerns.

00:05:23.449 --> 00:05:25.382
So my core team and I

00:05:25.406 --> 00:05:27.956
are able to concentrate
on the improvements

00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:30.224
that really benefit everyone.

00:05:30.248 --> 00:05:33.467
And we're able to look out
for the needs of newcomers.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:33.491 --> 00:05:35.221
So for do-it-yourselfers,

00:05:35.245 --> 00:05:39.367
we provide free,
very well-tested instructions

00:05:39.391 --> 00:05:41.476
so that anyone, anywhere around the world,

00:05:41.500 --> 00:05:43.649
can build one of these systems for free.

00:05:43.673 --> 00:05:46.395
And there's a patent pending
on these systems as well

00:05:46.419 --> 00:05:48.186
that's held by the community.

00:05:48.210 --> 00:05:50.114
And to fund the project,

00:05:50.138 --> 00:05:52.440
we partner to create products

00:05:52.464 --> 00:05:55.341
that we then sell
to schools and to individuals

00:05:55.365 --> 00:05:57.863
who don't have time
to build their own systems.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:58.736 --> 00:06:02.201
Now within our community,
a certain culture has appeared.

00:06:02.225 --> 00:06:04.938
In our culture,
it is better to be a tester

00:06:04.962 --> 00:06:07.231
who supports someone else's idea

00:06:07.255 --> 00:06:09.643
than it is to be just the idea guy.

00:06:10.449 --> 00:06:14.577
What we get out of this project
is support for our own work,

00:06:14.601 --> 00:06:18.522
as well as an experience
of actually contributing

00:06:18.546 --> 00:06:20.672
to the environmental movement

00:06:20.696 --> 00:06:23.623
in a way other than just
screwing in new light bulbs.

00:06:24.155 --> 00:06:26.802
But I think that Eleen expresses best

00:06:26.826 --> 00:06:28.303
what we really get out of this,

00:06:28.327 --> 00:06:31.162
which is the actual joy of collaboration.

00:06:31.686 --> 00:06:33.976
So she expresses here what it's like

00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:36.477
to see someone halfway across the world

00:06:36.501 --> 00:06:38.803
having taken your idea, built upon it

00:06:38.827 --> 00:06:40.976
and then acknowledging
you for contributing.

00:06:41.540 --> 00:06:45.447
If we really want to see
the kind of wide consumer behavior change

00:06:45.471 --> 00:06:49.126
that we're all talking about
as environmentalists and food people,

00:06:49.150 --> 00:06:51.535
maybe we just need
to ditch the term "consumer"

00:06:51.559 --> 00:06:54.375
and get behind the people
who are doing stuff.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:55.379 --> 00:06:58.551
Open source projects
tend to have a momentum of their own.

00:06:58.575 --> 00:07:00.615
And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y

00:07:00.639 --> 00:07:04.418
has moved beyond
just window farms and LEDs

00:07:04.442 --> 00:07:07.870
into solar panels and aquaponic systems.

00:07:08.633 --> 00:07:12.551
And we're building upon innovations
of generations who went before us.

00:07:12.575 --> 00:07:14.389
And we're looking ahead at generations

00:07:14.413 --> 00:07:17.333
who really need us
to retool our lives now.

00:07:18.415 --> 00:07:20.180
So we ask that you join us

00:07:20.204 --> 00:07:24.530
in rediscovering the value
of citizens united,

00:07:24.554 --> 00:07:28.350
and to declare
that we are all still pioneers.

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:29.270 --> 00:07:32.198
(Applause)