0:00:00.000,0:00:02.000
I, like many of you,

0:00:02.000,0:00:07.000
am one of the two billion people on Earth

0:00:07.000,0:00:09.000
who live in cities.

0:00:09.000,0:00:12.000
And there are days -- I don't know about the rest of you guys --

0:00:12.000,0:00:16.000
but there are days when I palpably feel

0:00:16.000,0:00:18.000
how much I rely on other people

0:00:18.000,0:00:21.000
for pretty much everything in my life.

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
And some days, that can even be a little scary.

0:00:24.000,0:00:26.000
But what I'm here to talk to you about today

0:00:26.000,0:00:29.000
is how that same interdependence

0:00:29.000,0:00:33.000
is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure

0:00:33.000,0:00:36.000
that we can actually harness

0:00:36.000,0:00:40.000
to help heal some of our deepest civic issues,

0:00:40.000,0:00:44.000
if we apply open source collaboration.

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
A couple of years ago,

0:00:46.000,0:00:49.000
I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Pollan

0:00:49.000,0:00:53.000
in which he argued that growing even some of our own food

0:00:53.000,0:00:55.000
is one of the best things

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000
that we can do for the environment.

0:00:57.000,0:00:59.000
Now at the time that I was reading this,

0:00:59.000,0:01:01.000
it was the middle of the winter

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt

0:01:04.000,0:01:07.000
in my New York City apartment.

0:01:07.000,0:01:09.000
So I was basically just willing to settle

0:01:09.000,0:01:11.000
for just reading the next Wired magazine

0:01:11.000,0:01:13.000
and finding out how the experts were going to figure out

0:01:13.000,0:01:16.000
how to solve all these problems for us in the future.

0:01:16.000,0:01:19.000
But that was actually exactly the point

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
that Michael Pollan was making in this article --

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
was it's precisely when we hand over

0:01:23.000,0:01:26.000
the responsibility for all these things to specialists

0:01:26.000,0:01:29.000
that we cause the kind of messes

0:01:29.000,0:01:32.000
that we see with the food system.

0:01:32.000,0:01:35.000
So, I happen to know a little bit from my own work

0:01:35.000,0:01:39.000
about how NASA has been using hydroponics

0:01:39.000,0:01:42.000
to explore growing food in space.

0:01:42.000,0:01:46.000
And you can actually get optimal nutritional yield

0:01:46.000,0:01:50.000
by running a kind of high-quality liquid soil

0:01:50.000,0:01:53.000
over plants' root systems.

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
Now to a vegetable plant,

0:01:55.000,0:01:57.000
my apartment has got to be

0:01:57.000,0:01:59.000
about as foreign as outer space.

0:01:59.000,0:02:02.000
But I can offer some natural light

0:02:02.000,0:02:04.000
and year-round climate control.

0:02:04.000,0:02:06.000
Fast-forward two years later:

0:02:06.000,0:02:08.000
we now have window farms,

0:02:08.000,0:02:10.000
which are vertical, hydroponic platforms

0:02:10.000,0:02:13.000
for food-growing indoors.

0:02:13.000,0:02:16.000
And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom,

0:02:16.000,0:02:19.000
which periodically sends some of this liquid nutrient solution up to the top,

0:02:19.000,0:02:22.000
which then trickles down through plants' root systems

0:02:22.000,0:02:24.000
that are suspended in clay pellets --

0:02:24.000,0:02:27.000
so there's no dirt involved.

0:02:27.000,0:02:29.000
Now light and temperature vary

0:02:29.000,0:02:31.000
with each window's microclimate,

0:02:31.000,0:02:33.000
so a window farm

0:02:33.000,0:02:35.000
requires a farmer,

0:02:35.000,0:02:37.000
and she must decide

0:02:37.000,0:02:40.000
what kind of crops she is going to put in her window farm,

0:02:40.000,0:02:44.000
and whether she is going to feed her food organically.

0:02:44.000,0:02:47.000
Back at the time, a window farm was no more

0:02:47.000,0:02:49.000
than a technically complex idea

0:02:49.000,0:02:52.000
that was going to require a lot of testing.

0:02:52.000,0:02:54.000
And I really wanted it to be an open project,

0:02:54.000,0:02:56.000
because hydroponics

0:02:56.000,0:02:58.000
is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting

0:02:58.000,0:03:00.000
in the United States right now

0:03:00.000,0:03:02.000
and could possibly become

0:03:02.000,0:03:04.000
another area like Monsanto,

0:03:04.000,0:03:07.000
where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property

0:03:07.000,0:03:10.000
in the way of people's food.

0:03:10.000,0:03:13.000
So I decided that, instead of creating a product,

0:03:13.000,0:03:15.000
what I was going to do

0:03:15.000,0:03:18.000
was open this up to a whole bunch of co-developers.

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
The first few systems that we created, they kind of worked.

0:03:22.000,0:03:24.000
We were actually able to grow about a salad a week

0:03:24.000,0:03:26.000
in a typical New York City apartment window.

0:03:26.000,0:03:28.000
And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and

0:03:28.000,0:03:30.000
cucumbers, all kinds of stuff.

0:03:30.000,0:03:32.000
But the first few systems

0:03:32.000,0:03:35.000
were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers

0:03:35.000,0:03:38.000
that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved.

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
(Laughter)

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
So to bring on more co-developers,

0:03:42.000,0:03:45.000
what we did was we created a social media site

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
on which we published the designs,

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
we explained how they worked,

0:03:49.000,0:03:52.000
and we even went so far

0:03:52.000,0:03:55.000
as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems.

0:03:55.000,0:03:57.000
And then we invited people all over the world

0:03:57.000,0:04:00.000
to build them and experiment with us.

0:04:01.000,0:04:03.000
So actually now on this website,

0:04:03.000,0:04:06.000
we have 18,000 people.

0:04:06.000,0:04:08.000
And we have window farms

0:04:08.000,0:04:10.000
all over the world.

0:04:10.000,0:04:12.000
What we're doing

0:04:12.000,0:04:14.000
is what NASA or a large corporation

0:04:14.000,0:04:17.000
would call R&D, or research and development.

0:04:17.000,0:04:20.000
But what we call it is R&D-I-Y,

0:04:20.000,0:04:24.000
or research and develop it yourself.

0:04:24.000,0:04:26.000
So for example,

0:04:26.000,0:04:28.000
Jackson came along and suggested

0:04:28.000,0:04:30.000
that we use air pumps instead of water pumps.

0:04:30.000,0:04:32.000
It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right,

0:04:32.000,0:04:34.000
but once we did, we were able

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half.

0:04:37.000,0:04:40.000
Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments,

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
like lots of other window farmers,

0:04:42.000,0:04:45.000
and he's been able to get his strawberries to fruit

0:04:45.000,0:04:48.000
for nine months of the year in low-light conditions

0:04:48.000,0:04:52.000
by simply changing out the organic nutrients.

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
And window farmers in Finland

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
have been customizing their window farms

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
for the dark days of the Finnish winters

0:04:58.000,0:05:01.000
by outfitting them with LED grow lights

0:05:01.000,0:05:04.000
that they're now making open source and part of the project.

0:05:04.000,0:05:06.000
So window farms have been evolving

0:05:06.000,0:05:08.000
through a rapid versioning process

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
similar to software.

0:05:10.000,0:05:13.000
And with every open source project,

0:05:13.000,0:05:15.000
the real benefit is the interplay

0:05:15.000,0:05:17.000
between the specific concerns

0:05:17.000,0:05:19.000
of people customizing their systems

0:05:19.000,0:05:21.000
for their own particular concerns

0:05:21.000,0:05:23.000
and the universal concerns.

0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000
So my core team and I

0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000
are able to concentrate on the improvements

0:05:27.000,0:05:30.000
that really benefit everyone.

0:05:30.000,0:05:33.000
And we're able to look out for the needs of newcomers.

0:05:33.000,0:05:35.000
So for do-it-yourselfers,

0:05:35.000,0:05:39.000
we provide free, very well-tested instructions

0:05:39.000,0:05:41.000
so that anyone, anywhere around the world,

0:05:41.000,0:05:43.000
can build one of these systems for free.

0:05:43.000,0:05:46.000
And there's a patent pending on these systems as well

0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000
that's held by the community.

0:05:48.000,0:05:50.000
And to fund the project,

0:05:50.000,0:05:52.000
we partner to create products

0:05:52.000,0:05:55.000
that we then sell to schools and to individuals

0:05:55.000,0:05:58.000
who don't have time to build their own systems.

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
Now within our community,

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
a certain culture has appeared.

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
In our culture, it is better to be a tester

0:06:04.000,0:06:07.000
who supports someone else's idea

0:06:07.000,0:06:10.000
than it is to be just the idea guy.

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
What we get out of this project

0:06:12.000,0:06:14.000
is we get support for our own work,

0:06:14.000,0:06:18.000
as well as an experience of actually contributing

0:06:18.000,0:06:20.000
to the environmental movement

0:06:20.000,0:06:23.000
in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs.

0:06:23.000,0:06:26.000
But I think that Eileen expresses best

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
what we really get out of this,

0:06:28.000,0:06:31.000
which is the actual joy of collaboration.

0:06:31.000,0:06:34.000
So she expresses here what it's like

0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000
to see someone halfway across the world

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
having taken your idea, built upon it

0:06:38.000,0:06:41.000
and then acknowledging you for contributing.

0:06:41.000,0:06:45.000
If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change

0:06:45.000,0:06:47.000
that we're all talking about

0:06:47.000,0:06:49.000
as environmentalists and food people,

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
maybe we just need to ditch the term "consumer"

0:06:51.000,0:06:55.000
and get behind the people who are doing stuff.

0:06:55.000,0:06:58.000
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own.

0:06:58.000,0:07:00.000
And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y

0:07:00.000,0:07:04.000
has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs

0:07:04.000,0:07:08.000
into solar panels and aquaponic systems.

0:07:08.000,0:07:10.000
And we're building upon innovations

0:07:10.000,0:07:12.000
of generations who went before us.

0:07:12.000,0:07:14.000
And we're looking ahead at generations

0:07:14.000,0:07:18.000
who really need us to retool our lives now.

0:07:18.000,0:07:20.000
So we ask that you join us

0:07:20.000,0:07:22.000
in rediscovering the value

0:07:22.000,0:07:24.000
of citizens united,

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.000
and to declare

0:07:26.000,0:07:29.000
that we are all still pioneers.

0:07:29.000,0:07:31.000
(Applause)