High-Tech Self-Production
Description
Uwe Christian Plachetka:
"The reconstruction of local economics cannot go back to Neolithic modes of production - simply for demographic reasons. The idea of some eco-villages etc. has a considerable boundary condition for their viability: The hours of work required for agriculture and home-made cloth etc. In the terminology of GIVE these models are known as subsistencia neolítica.
The concept of shared high-tech self-production which means to increase the efficiency of a village’s "chore" (Greek term for the lands dedicated to supply a polis) by using information processes for the optimum level of mobilizing local renewable resources such as sunlight, water, wind, biomass etc. needs the mobilization of what is known as "collective intelligence" since Pierre Lévy’s famous book on this matter (Lévy 1994) which means the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary cooperation of various experts such as agronomists, computer experts, architects etc. The chief challenge is the mobilization of brainforce in order to make each work hour for agricultural production more profitable. This is realized by so-called agricultural objects which mobilize the renewable resources. High-tech self-production is highly advocated by the philosopher Friethjof Bergmann(2) who seeks a redefinition of work. The chief point is that the neoliberal regime of the labor market fails to offer sufficient workplaces and enough work is left which is necessary but not paid - the complete sphere of reproduction. This causes as well migration from the so-called 3 rd world to the affluent social classes of the 1 st world, which is major concern of the sociologists here in Peru (see the study by the Peruvian sociologist Liliana Muñoz)(3). In brief, there is a trend among Latin American scientists to say that the costs of reproducing life in e.g. Europe are now financed not by the "industrial reserve army" (Marx) but by a "reproductive reserve army" working in hospitals, nannies etc. The sociological focus of Franz Nahrada’s concept of global integrated villages signifies that, due to the dependency of the all of human life on monetarist economics, this will eventually lead to a breakdown of the reproductive capacities of Western society - because, due to the imparity of purchase power, the low wages for migrants are not too bad - in terms of purchase power calculated by a "canasta familiar" - a basket of a families everyday needs - 1 Peruvian Sol has - still - the purchase power of one Euro in Austria. The exchange rate in fact is 1 Euro for 3,5 to 4 Soles, so the money sent home by migrants is in fact a factor in Peru’s domestic economy. This means that the neoliberal "Empire" (Hardt/Negri 2000) can exchange the internal proletariat (terminus used by Toynbee) by the external proletariat. The common denominator between Fritjof Bergmann’s "New Work" and Hardt/Negri’s Empire is the crisis of the system of the labor market.
In short, what Nahrada and Bergmann propose is the subsistencia telemática." (http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/02_4/plachetka16.htm)
More Information
For an explanation of 'Open Source Food produced by Open Source Villages', see http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/02_4/plachetka16.htm