New takes on the truly big picture are always useful. Even when they don't map directly to your own ideas, they can serve as useful provocations to thinking. That's totally true of Stewart Cowan's pattern map of the conservation economy. I might differ on the details, but Stewart did a brilliant job of showing how various aspects of change - human-scale neighborhoods, renewable energy, access to knowledge - interact with and inform one another.

A needed next step, however, is a build-your-own collaborative pattern map: say, a sustainability wikipedia with a graphic interface. It's great to see Stewart's take on this: it'd be revolutionary to be able to work with others to emerge your own. Anyone know of anything like that, or have suggestions about how such a thing ought to work?

(thanks for the reminder, Jack!)