I think all educated people should be able to list their primary fears for future of our world. Nuclear holocaust, genocide, endemic poverty, and unplanned consequences from genetic engineering all rank high on my list. However, I am especially concerned with the ultimate effects of unsustainable resource consumption and the associated changes in the Earth's natural environments. Humans are changing global biospheric processes in new ways at an unprecedented speed. I don't presume to know exactly what the ultimate consequences will be for human societies, but what worries me most is that no one else really does either. We seem content to march towards answering that question in the most uninformed and dangerous way imaginable.

I decided long ago that consumerism was the primary engine driving this problem and that working to cut off its fuel supply (increasing demand for resource intensive commodities) would is the best way to attack it. I have expended much effort trying to better understand the specific economic, social, political, and psychological mechanisms behind this phenomena. I embrace the fact that my comprehension is limited to the developed Western world because my home is responsible for developing the consumer spirit (and opposition to it) in its most pronounced form. Still, while my culture fans the flames quickly consuming the remaining natural environments, I have come to recognize that the larger threat comes from the adoption (or imposition) of this lifestyle on a global scale.

Some argue that I must take a step back... that one cannot question consumerism without first questioning the fundamental logic of capitalist economies and their inherent value systems. However, it seems to me that this line of inquiry quickly becomes very theoretical and counterproductive for resolving the pressing dilemma at hand. I am perfectly content to leave the matter with the academicians and would be revolutionaries best suited to such arguments.

Put simply, I do not believe that securing a higher quality of life for the world's people requires ever increasing levels of natural resource consumption. If I did, I would be a fatalist. Instead, I am interested in finding means to do more with less - to produce happiness (and contentment) more efficiently. I do not believe that technological innovation, market economics, and government intervention on their own will not be enough. However, I do believe that we can find new ways to harness these and other important social forces in concert to produce more efficient outcomes.

For me, one of the most compelling ways for this to happen is through the "decommodification" of particular goods and services - in other words, making them "free". This is already happening in the information and entertainment industries through the widespread deployment of web based information technologies. Often, the tools that made this trend possible were themselves produced outside traditional production processes and instead built by "open sourcing" many small pieces of a project to skilled individuals who intrinsically enjoy the necessary work and its outcome. This in turn has facilitated the development of tools that allow for easier sharing of existing resources - both digital and material. To me, this represents cutting edge social entrepreneurship and a concrete step towards building solutions to our most pressing material challenges.

My work focuses on compiling case studies of such freely organized innovations and using that knowledge to inform the building of better ones. I specifically study the use of online social networking mechanisms that encourage collaboration and resource sharing to efficiently meet human needs - in all their diversity. In this, I look at how different groups' activities are structured internally by their organizational models and externally by market and government forces. Through these observations, I hope to inform the creation of more productive organizational models in this area - those which will foster a pervasive ethos of participation in their community and minimize layers of hierarchy, bureaucracy, and technical complexity. The ultimate promise is helping people improve their lives and the surrounding world by doing what they already enjoy.

I'm Alex Goldman... that's me scowling at you from the pictures above. You can learn all about me, my thoughts on various matters, and the projects I'm working on by browsing through various areas of this site... for instance, click on the links above my face and in the tagcloud to the right. You can even chat with me through this site. If you want to read my more interesting and less self-absorbed essays, try these:
Korean Bathhouses and Public Space
The Promise of Aesthetic Agriculture
Why "Evasion"?
A time I thought I might die
The Birth of "Stallion!"
Non-Aligned Peace Keepers
miXXXfit and porno posturing
The Universal Translator is a Tech Mashup
The Beginnings of An Alt-Wilderness Vision
The Future of Social Networking

Still, I think all you really need to know about me is that I genuinely want to help realize good ideas for the good of the world. This means undertaking projects that make valuable resources more accessible to the people who need them most. You can learn about my projects by reading their respective blogs on the right below the tag cloud. I love thinking through diverse new ideas and connecting them to different points in my web of knowledge, so whatever you're working on will likely interest me in some way.

If you require advice/consulting, funding, and/or project management for similar social entrepreneurship ventures, please consider getting in touch. I want to help individuals and organizations with innovative ideas find ways to plan, implement, and test their models through demonstration projects requiring only moderate levels of investment. Moreover, we may be able to source the kind of key skills, resources, and background expertise that you need to make better decisions for the future of your venture. I don't want hijack your ideas or render you beholden to anyone but your stakeholders. If I can help find the means to more efficient, large-scale solutions that allow you to stay true to your ideals, my job is done.

You can contact me through alexevasion at gmail.com

This is only nominally a blog. It is most certainly not a diary. Although different individuals utilize this technology in different ways, I primarily use it to stay accountable to others. I provide my writings on this site in the hopes that more people will actually read them. Thus, I view this medium as both a promotion and a motivation tool. I would like to make myself as transparent as possible here - projecting not just my digital identity, but my full identity digitally. If you can't learn more about me here than you ever could in a half hour conversation, you just aren't trying.

Anyhow, I'm very proud of the design of this site and hope that the following explanation will stem your confusion and clarify the purpose of its layout. Like most everyone who writes a lot, I have multiple topics to address. So, I have included a tag cloud to help visitors better navigate the site's content and see how heavily key ideas are featured. However, unlike most bloggers, my topical areas are often closely linked with the different projects that I am currently developing or actively managing. Now, I could have chosen to maintain a different blog for each project at a different domain name, or have used a certain part of each project's existing domain url for that purpose. However, since these projects are all inextricably bound together, both through conceptual ties and of course through me, I've found what I consider to be a much more exciting and elegant solution.

This website and was built an the open-source content management system called Drupal. This is the same basic framework that many websites use, but with very different appearance and functionality made possible by the versatility of this software. The design theme used here is called “Meta” and was contributed by Ken Collins for interested parties like myself to deploy as they see fit. The “Meta Tools” found at the top of the page gives users the ability to resize the text and center column width on any page. However, the best part of this package are the small colored squares in that same region lets you switch between different project themes.

All content on the site is specifically related to one of the five themes, so that whenever users access a blog, picture, or video, the background color and the masthead image on the page will automatically match the project with which that material is associated. This isn't so cool if only view content only related me and my various wild ideas, which receive the default layout - multiple images of me staring at you. However, when someone in a some strange forum far, far away provides a link to content on this site related to one of my projects, those who follow the link will be directed to a page that is correctly themed for that project.

This effectively gives me a five-in-one solution and minimizes the credibility issues associated with personal blog content! However, even if the content they are viewing is completely divorced from anything relating to me personally, those who are paying attention may have noticed that the site name doesn't match the name of the project being spotlighted and that there are a bunch of strange links in the header leading to information about some guy named Alex Goldman. Still more importantly, this kind of format increases the likelihood that visitors will find themselves stumbling into differently themed content concerning one or more of the other projects, thus giving the site a little more “WTF” surprise and marketing buckshot. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Tell your friends to check this out and think more about the innovative web design possibilities out there for non-developers like you and me!

PS: I know sometimes content spills off the bottom of the white space. I'm waiting for the next version of Meta to come out and fix this issue

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