Just finished reading WorldChanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, which I picked up while in San Francisco.

This really dense book of 500+ pages spans all sortsa worldchaning info. There’s a recipe for making your own biodiesel brew, tips for renovating or greening your home — even some ideas on how to deal with emergency refugees or land mines.

And if you, like me, have no fucking clue what nanotech is, here’s WorldChanging’s simple def: “engineering functional technologies at the molecular scale.” Sounds intense.

Oddly, there are times when this brand spankin’ new WorldChanging book actually seems a bit dated. One piece, for example, sez “The iPod is probably the best example of a gadget with extremely limited functions — and earth-shattering success. The little device is siimple, straightforward, and utterly ubiquitous.” But now that the iPod’s expanded to letting you do everything from watch films to take pictures, the gadget’s functions don’t seem so limited anymore –

LA gets a lil shoutout in a short piece called “Trees for a Green LA,” which big-ups the LA DWP’s free tree program :)

And each section’s followed by recommendations for further reading and research. All in all, an inspiring read — one I’ll prolly return to again and again as a reference guide. The book’s edited by Alex Steffen with a foreword by Al Gore — with lots of pieces by Jamais Cascio, who helped co-found, but is no longer with, WorldChanging. For a lil note on how it feels to be in the WorldChanging book, check out Jamais’ review of sorts in Open the Future.

The LA book launch party’s gonna be hosted by GOOD magazine on Dec. 2, time and place TBA. I def. plan to be there –

Comments