By webmaster Monday June 29th 2009 12:10 Central European Time

Dear fellow techies, especially you green ones

If you are a little bit like me, then every time you see a problem the immediate hunch is to think: “how can we use a machine to solve that?”

Before we dive into this line of reasoning and start drawing up our requirement specifications for a system, there are a couple of questions that we don’t often ask, but maybe should start asking ourselves.

The first question is: “Do we really need to do this at all?” Some issues are not really problems when you think about it, we have just been accustomed to see them that way. When you think about it, it isn’t really a problem if you don’t at all times possess a cell phone with all the latest features, but a large number of people, nevertheless, seem to perceive it that way.

Of course, there are those cases that are not only perceived as problems, but constitute real problems. If you are a living organism, that does not happen to be at the bottom of a food chain and, hence, not fortunate enough to master the art of photosynthesis, then a shortage of nutrition is of course a very real problem. As you are all aware of, homo sapiens finds itself in quite the opposite end of the food chain than those organisms that master photosynthesis. And no matter where you are in a food chain, a shortage of water is bad news.

Many countries, especially in the third world, are quite dry. Every time it rains, it does not take long before the water is sucked up into the dry ground. But it does not disappear into nowhere. It is down there if you dig deep enough to get to it. Thus, we consider digging wells. Actually, quite a large number of humanitarian organizations world wide, seem to be raising funds to do just that, dig wells.

Now, once you have dug or drilled a well, it is the matter of getting the water up to where you want to make use of it. If its supposed to be used for irrigation, then the typical solution would be to install a pump. The green tech solution would typically be a pump driven by wind power. The not so green tech solution would maybe be one driven by a diesel engine.

What if we asked ourselves, before we started, if a well and pump solution is the best solution at all? What if we asked ourselves if, rather than getting the water up from deep down in the ground, we should think of a solution to keep some of the rain water from ending up there in the first place? With some alteration to the terrain and the right mix of vegetation, it is actually possible.

I still consider the approach a design and engineering solution, but it is engineering and design by natural means rather than machines. Sometimes that might be the best.

Further reading:

• Website review: World Community Grid
• Are solar cells the solution to the energy crisis?
• Travel report, Philippines September 2009
• My aliens told me that your aliens are wrong
• Made to break or last?

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