Photo by Eli Blevis
grass, with a worm-powered compost bin stationed outdoors. Inside they use a wood-fired furnace to heat their home. Much of their knowledge
comes from trial and error. While they are happy
to share their knowledge with others, don’t expect
them to be posting their techniques and secrets to
mailing lists: Their lone computer is on a dial-up
modem. and it is rarely powered up.
How could interested parties learn from these
practitioners? One potential option would be to
leverage the technologies used by the local Center
for Sustainable Living as a means of outreach to
the larger community. Such organizations recognize the benefit of using technology as an efficient
mode of communication. Many communities are
making a focused effort to document oral histories
of their older citizens. Similarly, efforts can be
made to document traditional farming techniques.
Through the use of video and audio recording,
podcasts, YouTube, or online permaculture networking sites, permaculture and farming techniques are being shared across the world.
Acknowledgements
This article is informed by interview-based research carried out under IU IRB Study #08-13473. Many thanks to
the participants of that study, as well as to the interviewers in addition to the authors, namely Rajasee Rege, Xi
Zhu, Feixing Tuang, and Brandon Stephens. Many thanks
also to Shunying Blevis, Kristin Hanks, Qian Huang,
Dasen Hu, Lee Jones, Dale Jones, Richard Beckwith, and
Tad Hirsch for their discussions with us on these topics.
• A mushroom urban farm—vermiculture worm composting
system (Foreground) and mushroom growing logs (Background).
March + April 2009
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Eli Blevis serves on the
faculty in the Human-Computer Interaction Design
program of the School of Informatics at Indiana
University, Bloomington. Dr. Blevis’ primary area of
research, and the one for which he is best known,
is sustainable interaction design. This area of
research and Dr. Blevis’ core expertise are situated within the confluence of human computer interaction as it owes to the computing
and cognitive sciences, and design as it owes to the reflection of
design criticism and the practice of critical design. Dr. Blevis has
published more than 50 articles and papers and has given several
invited colloquia internationally on sustainable interaction design
and the larger context of notions of design
maculture in the form of mushroom farming for
more than 25 years. But this is no traditional farm:
It occupies their front and back yards, in an affluent residential area. They have transformed their
property into an efficient growing environment for
shiitake mushrooms, which they sell to their local
cooperative grocery.
Over the years, the natural areas surrounding
their neighborhood have been developed. What
was once a cattle farm to the east now houses
hundreds of apartments, a retirement center, a
variety of chain stores, restaurants, and a cinema complex. Pavement runoff has created flooding to the south and is becoming a problem for
low-lying floodplains.
As the area around them transformed, Michael
and Luane grew closer to the earth. Their yard
is distinct from their neighbor’s. They have little
Susan Coleman Morse is a master’s student in
Human Computer Interaction Design at Indiana
University. Her interests include small scale biodie-sel production, local food networks and leveraging
design to support sustainable living practices.
DOI: 10.1145/1487632.1487646
© 2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0300 $5.00
