LifeBubbles - The Big Picture

Life-Affirming Choices

Technology is not ecosystem neutral. What gadgets we buy, what clothes we wear, how, when and where we travel, what house we live in and what food we eat, all involve technology choices. Some technologies are life-supporting, some do no harm and others destroy life & ecosystems. The idea of this site is to help stimulate ideas and discussion about the concept of creating truly sustainable human habitats - LifeBubbles that are more economical than traditional houses and more comfortable.

Life Support Technologies

LifeBubbles is a thoughtful "open source" movement to critically examine essential human life-support technologies and cooperatively redesign those that are flawed and unsustainable. By adopting and using those new and better life support technologies and then sharing ideas and experiences, LifeBubble FutureSmiths contribute to continuous improvement. The outcomes are tangible benefits like cheaper living spaces that are more comfortable, last much longer and need no fossil fuels to run or low-cost water and waste management systems that pay for themselves by producing nutritious local food.

Open-Source Technology Movement

LifeBubble is not a wishful fantasy. Its founders and early adopters are practical people who have real experience with both successful innovation, commercialization and business. We deliberately chose an open-source technology platform because we think it is the best way to quickly displace the unsustainable systems and technologies that currently support human life at the escalating cost of destroying the biosphere. Proprietary technology development can at most afford a relatively small group of smart people to design better technologies. Even a very smart group of private designers can never match the collective brainpower, ingenuity or agility of an entire movement of designer-users connected to each other and learning from shared experiences. This website is the starting point for connection.

Open source does not mean we are limited to generic public domain technologies. Where it makes sense and there is a clearly identified need, we may negotiate licenses for the best available enabling technologies identified by the LifeBubble community. The point is to incorporate and adapt enabling technologies to best meet the needs of the LifeBubble community, create life-affirming technologies and make affordable emerging products based on these available to the new recruits building LifeBubbles who will need them. Transparent greenhouse canopies is a case in point. Show me a long lasting transparent material that is affordable and easy to deploy! Hollow extrusion ETFE honeycomb sheets (like polycarbonate sheets that last only 8 - 10 yrs) would last for 100 years or more but guess what? Nobody makes it - anywhere on the planet! So unless you have a budget like Kew Gardens for your greenhouse where you're still stuck with heavy UV blocking glass and even heavier metal framing, the only cost-effective alternative is thin film single skin structures like the one pictured above.

Philanthropy and Social Enterprise

We believe in the power of social enterprise. If structured as social enterprises, the profits from these enterprises could help support the movement and the priority projects we identify, coordinated by the natural leaders emerging out of the LifeBubbles community. As with other open source projects, people are donating their time, money and ideas because they believe in helping co-create a better future.

Priority LifeBubble projects

• 1. LifeBubbles Ecovillage - There is no better way to demonstrate the benefits of sustainable living than to live it! We are a group of people who believe in the LifeBubbles vision - "to create an enduring sacred place that is as close to paradise as we can make it!"

  2. LifeBubbles - A human habitat (people and their food plants) kept comfortable, highly productive and wonderful to live in by cleverly thermo-coupling with a huge thermal mass of surrounding soil or rock. Essentially, LifeBubbles are a way of manipulating the micro-climate in a semi-enclosed space using only solar energy, earth, air, water and plants and people. Over the next 20 years, with your support, the concept will evolve into an elegant, self-maintaining ecosystem that will support humans for millennia with minimal ongoing effort, and will work in any of the habitable climatic regions on earth.

  3. EcoTunnel - a low cost passive (no external energy source needed) sanitation system that takes human organic waste and used-water and, produces liquid organic fertilizer and distributes it into the soil using capillary irrigation to produce fresh food at-source. Some exciting developments on this goal already through a sister organisation GOSEP.org!

Field Demonstration Trials .- High profile humanitarian projects will be progressively identified and carefully selected to showcase LifeBubble technologies and systems to the world. Implementing these projects will provide a fantastic opportunity for FutureSmiths to meet face to face to share ideas and learn new skills. They will be non-virtual focal points for developing the LifeBubbles tribe.