Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
Marcin Jakubowski, the owner of a small farm in northwestern Missouri, is an agrarian romantic for high-tech times. He holds a Ph.D. in fusion physics. In 2003, the year that he received his doctorate, Jakubowski started a Web site, Open Source Ecology, or O.S.E., with the aim of collecting the best techniques for creating sustainable communities. In 2009, Jakubowski posted on the O.S.E. blog a list of fifty machines that, in his view, could cheaply provide everything that a small community needed to sustain a comfortable existence. The list became the Global Village Construction Set. It includes mainstays of contemporary life (tractor, bakery oven, wind turbine) and also exotic, and relatively untested, equipment: an aluminum extractor, developed for lunar missions, that wrests the metal from clay; a bioplastic extruder, which converts plant-based plastic into such domestic necessities as window frames and adhesive tape. So far, Jakubowski has built sixteen of the machines - most of them prototypes - and he has also sold a few. The boldness of his dream resonates widely. In 2012, Time called the Global Village Construction Set one of the year’s best inventions, and Jakubowski’s TED talk has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. And, nearly every day, he receives e-mails from strangers who want to help him remake civilization, without the competition, bloodshed, or environmental depredation. To Jakubowski, the antidote to specialization and secrecy [is] obvious: self-sufficiency and a willingness to share information.
Note: Don't miss the great, four-minute TED Talk on this inspiring development.
