millsworks

William Kamkwamba is a young Malawian innovator who gained attention through the simple act of crafting a windmill to help irrigate his family farm and to generate a basic supply of electricity – at the age of 14.

I’ve posted before about how the future is being invented in garage laboratories and there is plenty of talk flowing through the interwebs about shit like steampunk, makers, hackerlabs and other cultural shifts that are seeing people become more than mere consumers of technology. The tech has become so ubiquitous in our lives we are now dissembling it, re-arranging it, renovating it, re-purposing and innovating tech products and tech knowledge to build the world we choose to live in.

DNA sequencing in the basement – next to the home brew kit – is not only inevitable, it’s already happening. Robotics, tesla coils, hovercraft, solar arrays, radio astonomy observatories, high altitude photography experiments – you name it and someone is yanking apart an old appliance and building something that is righteous, bizarre and absolutely necessary.

Kamkwamba built his windmills from necessity – he needed water to grow food – he needed electricity to communicate and see within the darkness. The materials he used were cobbled together from a junkyard. The most valuable resource he had at his disposal was knowledge.

We do well to remember we are not just living in a knowledge economy but also a knowledge culture. As the economic shit continues to hit the fan – and it will – and empires collapse in upon themselves and the comforts of consumer culture wane it will be replaced with knowledge – the knowledge that we can make whatever we need in order to survive and thrive and keep in touch with each other. Knowledge can cure hunger – that’s a cool concept – and if we stay connected with each other we will always have access to knowledge – we shall never be ignorant, unless willfully so.

Cheers.