Core77

ETech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, goes green with its upcoming conference about "the tech of abundance and constraints".

We live in two worlds: one filled with abundance and the other with constraints. Each has its own favorite -- or essential to survival -- inventions and directions. Each has been deeply affected by technology.

The abundant world has access to the Internet and other educational tools, to the latest advances in medicine, to culinary choices from around the globe, and up until recently, access to "plenty of" energy. This abundance can lead to waste since most everyday objects are easier and cheaper to replace than fix. But sometimes this excess can lead to creation -- a reinvention of waste -- as we see in the pages of Make magazine.

The constrained world has to make do with what's available. Why scrimp and sacrifice for a computer when most people have mobile phones with an SMS server that can do the job just fine? With limited food, water, fuel, medicine, it's the people and their ideas that are often the cheapest part of the equation. Their technology looks to collaboration and connection with fewer resources -- almost the opposite of the industrialized world which seeks to make each individual as effective as possible.

What technologies cross the divide? How do the two interact and cross-pollinate?

Alex Steffen of Worldchanging is excited and so are we.

photo: ETech