Science and technology have created the possibility of renewable, closed loop systems that bring health and energy to people and the economy with absolutely no waste. Making it a mainstream reality is essential for the economy's long term survival, not to mention human life.
I woke up this morning at 6am to the sound of my Nokia N900 alarm, still searching for a sim card in this new old American land. While we were spending the last month in India between our most recent life in London and our new life in the Bay Area, we spent a week in a small coastal spot in the state of Kernataka called Gokarna.
While the rest of our month was filled with Mumbai chaotic excitement, motorcycles through Hampi boulders and temples, and family time in Kerala, our week in Gokarna was kind of like an extended New Years Day of resolutions and visions for 2010. We also spent time over four days practicing a morning ritual that will become a key part of our 2010 back in the United States.
When I reflected on the last few phases of my adult life since college, I saw that while I have been someone with strong vision and ideas for the future, my 7 years in Brooklyn and 3 years in London haven't seen much actual progress on putting finishing polish on any of ideas or creative work.
Especially during in my time at R/GA in London, I gave most of my waking energy to work and projects with clients and colleagues on the global Nokia Account. I don't regret the time I dedicated toward promoting the online & mobile launch event Rihanna Live for example, but at times it felt like I misplaced part of my soul at home.
There are words, music and images that I have been gathering on my journey over the last 10 years, stories that I feel compelled to share, applications that I want to create. And instead of pretending that I will work on these projects when I get home at night, with my head full of the inevitably chaotic day, I have decided that I will be keeping the clearest part of the day for myself and my priorities. I will be "choosing the morning."
So good morning to a great 2010 here in the Bay Area. Good afternoon to folks in London and good evening to those out in Mumbai and Singapore. I look forward to sharing some of these words and images and stories in the coming days and weeks and months. Now onto sit ups and push ups before breakfast.
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My song Destination Non-Specific has spread on Youtube mostly because users are forced to strip the copyrighted music from their videos (using YouTube's audioswap function), and are offered Creative Commons music like mine to replace it.
The first ones were pretty random, like the first, Thunder Bay Flyover.
Then, a few months ago, I got a pretty interesting one where user comments were upset cause the song was used on top of a popular video from one of their favorite artists. The users of course weren't that happy, but it was interesting to see some of the comments were positive about the song.
Then today I realized did a search and realized that the song had been used a lot, so did a search on youtube for "Destination Non-Specific" and it came up about 50 results on Youtube.
When I was browsing, I noticed a user named annamaisa had even made an actual music video for the song, and it's actually pretty beautiful (and viewed over 10,000 times). See here.
Overall, people continue to validate my belief that many of us are living in the emerging gift economy. While I still have not leveraged any my life long social capital for actual tangible cash capital, I think that day might be coming soon.
Thanks all for the collaboration. Let's keep building the new economy. Check out "350 Make a Choice" from MuskokaDreamscape, which uses an alionsonny remix of my CCmixter track Everyday Choices to promote 350.org's climate action campaign.
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For a potential project I am exploring, I searched online to try to find out where the garbage that I throw out in city garbage/rubbish bins goes. The best information I could find was article in the Guardian called "Following the rubbish trail," but it was from 2004. I wrote an email to the author Leo Hickman, but so far, no response (I'm sure he busy on new articles).
So I asked my housemate, a proper Londoner where she would look, and she pointed me to the city councils. After a quick google search, I found the newly organized London Waste & Recycling Board, and sent the following letter to the contact person listed. I'll let you know how it goes.
--
Hi,
Thanks for the work you do for the city of London. I used to live in
New York City, and London is definitely a much cleaner city. As
someone interested in environmental issues, I have become interested in
finding out more about the impact (positive and negative) that I make
with my daily life and choices.
One specific piece of information I haven't been able to find online is
where the rubbish is taken that I put into the public bins around the
city. Do you know where I would be able to find out? While I'm
intersted to know where it all goes, the buroughs I am more interested
in are my home burough of Hackney, as well as Islington, Camden and
City of London.
Any information or contact information for the right person to contact would be very much appreciated.
Cheers,
Colin
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As mentioned previously, I think the most important tool that still needs to be created is an implicit carbon footprint calculator (so the data is based on reality, and users don't have to make up numbers submitted into a form). However, in the meantime, the flash video footprint calculator from Earthday.net is one of the more fun I've seen. 
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Check out Mazdar, the future green city being built in typical Dubai fashion. Lots of money, totally from scratch, and now, with 100% renewable energy and zero waste.
Link to Youtube video (embedding was disabled for some reason).
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