Discover Top Posts Tagged with #radical science

Soon normal biological functions will become irrelevant with alternatives like this but only with strong support and investment from everyone involved, it will be suppresed and even sabotaged by the patriarchy and biological determinists for daring to break traditional conventions and social norms. Science is the future and our salvation, which makes it worse that capitalism perverts and corrupts everything it touches including scientific research.

A Call to Action

Pairing science and data with organizing around local environmental and health concerns is at the heart of “community science.” Community science recognizes that the power of science for communities is not in generating data; it is in using science as a way to move toward social change. In doing so, science is incorporated as one tool among many that people can use in observing, exploring, critically analyzing, and answering questions about the places and communities in which they live.

#radical science #science for the people #science

Although often not associated with the radical science movement, the Alternative Corporate Plan produced by workers at Lucas Aerospace in the UK in the 1970s was, one of radical science’s outstanding achievements.

The Combine decided to go straight to the workforce. First it asked members in different factories to compile an inventory of all equipment, workforce composition, and skills. The final question the Combine asked was, “Are there any socially useful products which your plant could design and manufacture?” The Combine emphasized that the criterion of social usefulness included the ways in which the products were made, making sure that workers were not deskilled in the process. Asking workers and shop stewards these questions, which were traditionally the prerogative of the management, proved empowering.

The results of the workforce consultation exercise were extraordinary, although a major factor was the fact that this was an extremely highly skilled workforce. 150 product ideas were put forward, many of them well ahead of their time, such as wind turbines (which were just one step away from the aircraft turbine blades they were producing), hybrid car engines, and combined heat and power systems for use on social housing estates. The products fell into six categories: medical equipment, transport, improved braking systems, energy conservation, oceanics, and telechiric machines. A key medical proposal was to increase production of kidney dialysis machines, which were in short supply in Britain. One particularly famous idea was a road-rail bus, designed to transfer from rail to road in rural areas, thus creating a cheaper and more integrated rural transport system. In the recent documentary film The Plan, Phil Asquith recounts how the prototype for the road-rail bus was built using commercially available parts while Lucas foremen were looking the other way.

#The Lucas Plan #work #UK #radical science #technology