By Land Destroyer (Reporter)
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April 9, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – LocalOrg) – “The Spark“(Facebook / Vimeo) is an interesting and ongoing grassroots project that fits in well with an older article featured on LocalOrg titled, “Decentralizing Big-Retail.” The article illustrated the waste, disparity, and exploitation promoted by the current “big-retail” monopolies and the consumerist paradigm modern society is dependent on, and suggests as an alternative the leveraging of technology to replace entirely this paradigm with local solutions.

It featured a combination of projects from urban farming to technological havens called “makerspaces” or “hackerspaces” working in tandem to turn a city block into a sustainable, self-sufficient economic unit driven by open source collaboration, technology, and local entrepreneurship.

The similarities between each project's philosophy illustrates that while one is involved in building technology and the other in growing food within their community, both can work together toward a common goal – a future determined by us not at the ballot box or the local protest rally, but by our own two hands. Another term the comes up frequently is “post-scarcity,” or the creation of material abundance through the use of technology that zeroes out resource scarcity.

This illustrates that the visions of those involved in “The Spark,” as well as the solutions in “Decentralizing Big-Retail” are not communes where people convince themselves to be happy with less, but the daring dash forward into a future where politics and protests are replaced by technological pragmatism and progress.

It will not happen overnight, and as those who view “The Spark” will see, it will not be easy. But it will work – which is more than anyone can say about the political hamster wheel humanity has been running on century after long century. 

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