Rocketboy is a concept I developed which is meant to mitigate the local and global energy crisis, by allowing people to order anything they need, and have it delivered to their homes for free. It requires a long term rollout, and a recalibration of how we undertake every day transactions. A friend of mine asked me this: If you're anti-consumerism, why design or even implement a system that promotes it?
That's a very good question. Here's a multiple choice answer:
1) to make bags and bags of money
2) to save the world
3) to become famous and powerful
4) to make a contribution to society
5) because I stumbled on a bunch of ideas that took my breath away
In a way, it's a piece of all five. I may oppose companies like McDonalds and Shell, but they exist. I may oppose the PetroDollar (as reserve currency) but it is a system allowing financing to flow everywhere. I may oppose the use of oil, and our addiction to it, but I also have to get to work every day.
Increasingly, that paragraph doesn't satisfy me.
We are headed towards very hard times, very soon. Months from now, possibly weeks, this world will be shaken to its foundations, and things won't return to normal. Normal is now, and we're on borrowed time. It's not pleasant news, it's damned depressing. But an even more unpleasant reality awaits us than the gloom of reading about it.
So to be honest, given the fact that I don't really see 'normal' world in the next few months, I can't honestly expect my grand ideas to make it past the conceptual stage. Time, I fear, has finally caught up with us my friends.
But, since I am an optimist and a cynic rolled into one realistic, and I hope, practical person, I will complete the document I've worked on and promote the idea. It is possible that it could contribute a vital service to a struggling population. While I feel our rampant consumption is wrong, it is real, and in a world gone mad, people will try to maintain their lifestyles. This change will probably happen very quickly, but if it is staggered, Rocketboy will provide some comfort. Imagine that you are sick, or hungry, and fuel cost have tripled or quadrupled, but one service still allows you to make some reasonable and affordable purchases?
That's the idea.
It is not really to promote consumption as much as its to allow people to remain connected to familiar resources they'd otherwise be cut off from.
Ambition has its place in the world, for example in sports, and in schools. I am not sure if we ought to be ambitious about maintaining any kind of lifestyle that is anything like this one. I am not sure if I ought to allow that deception, or prolong it. But it's possible, if I am the owner and dreamer of a powerful entity, it's possible that through it, I can communicate our new paradigm. We can be connected by virtue of our human-ness, not our money.
I have my doubts whether this is worth attempting. It seems to me that being the editor of a magazine, or a farmer, or a teacher, is a more meaningful way to approach the meaningless world we're in, and a viable way to move beyond our collective hallucinations, into the cold, hard Earth of tomorrow. Tomorrow, according to my watch, is mere minutes aw
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