I arranged to meet during their regular 10:30 coffee break.
I showed them this video explaining how this way of arranging knowledge works. In response one of them said
J:"So the difference is that the forum groups together which people see things in different ways so you can see the bias. I suppose even our thoughts are bias. We are all pro organic. It would be good to compare out views to others."
Me: "yea thats what its about"
J: "Is that really that different from what is there now, we can see the bias of news papers"
Me: " I really think it is. There is not really a form of media that puts such an emphasis on grouping similar views together and making it easy to compare other views easily.
J: "okay it groups all the different people rather than it be by just one good or bad editor"
Me: Yea. Furthermore forms of media really do make a big difference to society. This 60's guy Marshall McLuhan said 'the medium is the message', which meant that the form of media is what makes the difference. So, centralised media - radio, TV - make people gather in living rooms receiving information, Facebook, Twitter and Google are different and more interactive but they can leave you in your own media bubble hearing only what your peers say.
L: "So this aims to break out of that so you can see other views too."
Me: "That is. Media really can make a difference to society. Without the printing press we probably wouldn't have democracy or have dismantled the power the church held on people's minds.
Me: Perhaps we can look to find something we can comment on from you guys... We need to ask ourselves a question on a certain topic. Hopefully the answer we give can help differentiate better and worse ways of producing food
We discussed how coffee can be wasteful of water for a bit... this could have worked if we knew more about the different methods and which ones did waste water so we could avoid buying them. Also some other issues to do with coffee were discussed, as we continued to sip our lovely aromatic drinks believing it cant be really that bad...
We moved on to something closer to home, pest control.
Me: So from your point of view what general different approaches to pest control are there?" (link)
After a bit of discussing what is different about the different approaches they came up with this:
"By not looking after the soil properly you have weaker plants which can suffer more from pest attack and remain needy for artificial inputs and increase the need for pesticides. This type of approach will just feed the top few inches (Do fertilisers really just feed the top few inches?).
Our approach is to see our soil as a living entity, and by using system to feed and nurture the soil we can then produce strong, healthy crops. So pesticide use is reduced."
Me: As this answer gets worked on and created by more of a community it can really make a louder voice to help explain what distinguishes different types of food. Organic is great however it can need more explaining and I feel it should be explained by everyone and anyone rather than few editors. 'Organic' also needs more explaining more because it can seem to some people like it means 'Premium'.
L: "There are some organic farms who do things really well but they are also those who try to get away with as much as they can and do just enough to get the certification"
Me: "Sure, I think that by laying out lots of well explained answers on what is better and worse, that could be in scales (or grades), would mean that producers can show how good they are in lots of ways rather than with a simple organic / non-organic distinction.
We left it at that. With the 'Vegdoctor' signed up and lots to say. Hopefully their views can find their place in a good working knowledge framework and spread far and wide.
No comments:
Post a Comment