The New GoldSmiths of Today–-Eco-Metallurgists & Solarcell Smithies–The Guilded Craftsmen of our Micro Generation

It’s funny how things are passed down thru the family tree – poetry, passions, proclivities, and possessions and my younger brother’s penchant for metal parts in toy robots, trucks, and trains, and G.I. Joe Die-Cast Metal toys – but funnier still is how craft guilds of the medieval ages have re-germinated and indeed exploded in today’s “Micro Generation” i.e. ‘Micro Breweries’ (like Moab Brewery in Utah, K-hole in Montana, and Clipper City Brewing Co. in Maryland); and ‘Micro Farming’, (the Code word for ‘Slow Foods’, ‘Sustainable Agriculture’ and its ‘Locavore’ devotees); and ‘Micro Living’, (Magazine issues synonymous with dozens of clever Do-It-Yourself Makeovers in small residential places); and ‘Microventures’ and ‘Micro Loan Investing’, (Buzz words for Venture Capital and Angel sources of funding); and ‘Micro-Manufacturing’, (exemplified by the e-commerce website ‘etsy.com’, where hundreds of artisans sell their unique handmade arts and crafts and vintage wares on the internet).

But perhaps less publicized in today’s ‘Micro Generation’ is the ‘Micropower Movement’ – the quiet but inventive engineering craftsmenship of today’s green energy systems being deployed on small-scale, decentralized locations thru community-sponsored solar rooftop programs that encourage ‘solar electricity panels’ and ‘solar hot water panels’ and thru private investments such as Brooklyn-based ‘Solar Ivy’ – whose unique modular design combines photovoltaic technology and piezoelectrics with eco-art — a customized leafy-like arrangement of solar collectors “that draw inspiration from ivy growing on a building”. Other manifestations of this ‘Micropower Movement’ include private investments in underwater tidal turbines in state waterways like the type being installed in New York City’s East River, and thru wind turbine farms, the largest of which can be found in Texas and California and soon to be constructed – America’s first offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. This materials challenge for developing renewable energy systems using eco-friendly processes and recyclable metallic materials, ceramics, composites, powders, and thin films is what might be called the modern-day equivalent of the ‘Quest for the Holy Grail’ – the idea being that our civilization is in the middle of a huge transformational shift that will reshape the world we now live in – where the association of guilded craftsmen will give way to “eco-smithies” – and their “eco-breakthrough technologies” – new technologies that will reduce CO2 emissions and convert waste into useful fuels – increase energy-efficiency and boost environmental strategies around the world.

No where is this more evident than at ‘Ecotech Institute’ in Aurora, Colorado which just opened up its doors for the first time on July 7, 2010. As their brochure states, this is the “first and only college entirely focused on preparing graduates for careers in the rapidly growing fields of renewable energy, sustainable design, and energy efficiency.” And at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, a new business model is being used to accommodate and boost “eco-smithies” for the “Next Industrial Revolution”. Just as the blacksmiths, tinsmiths, silversmiths, and goldsmiths were the locally grown ‘agents of change’ in their day – so too are today’s ‘ecosmiths’ – except their domain is the whole planet – its ecological systems and energy sources in addition to specialty material technologies.

But I rather think that we perhaps have come full circle rather than adjusted our eco-priorities – for my younger gifted brother, like his knightly sword-smithing ancestors before him, works on super alloys – in search of a new type of ‘Excalibur’. Surely no legendary eco-craftsman is as powerful on the imagination as that of the medieval imagery of the Lady of the Lake who bequeaths to King Arthur his mythical sword – forged by the mystical realms on the Isle of Avalon and imbued with such magical powers as great as nature itself. That story more than any other medieval tale, speaks to us metaphorically about the ecological consequences of a broken sword in a way that makes the guilded craftsmen of that time and place– as relevant today – as they were in King Arthur’s time. And surely no truer eco-knight ever lived!