SOCIABLE MOBILITY
SOCMO
This is intended to be means to help expand life-affirming activity, the hands-on building of an optimal environment, beginning with the ways that people get around, using the most creative, minimal, vehicles. Human power and the human scale are finally being seen as preferable, by many, to the industrial model, which dominates public, especially urban, environments.
The bikes and e-bikes that now populate the streets in exponentially-growing numbers have the potential to free the streets from the strangulation that they are experiencing in toxic, congested spaces all over the world. They can become weather-protecting and multi-person, unique and beautiful, comfortable and healthful, the most preferable form of transport.
Evolving into the next generations of mobility is inevitable now, but if their evolution is exclusively focused on profit-making, in the hands of the largest, profit-centered entities, we will have lost the opportunity to direct this activity into those who should be taking full advantage of it, designers and mechanics, artists and fabricators, engineers and cyclists, sculptors and tinkerers. Experts in electronics and woodworking, quilting, architecture and suspension, and so many others, can all be full partners in the creation of a sustainable future. Generating local, cooperative, design/build efforts is a primary goal here. www.AMovement.org is intended to help expedite this development as a non -profit resource.
Sociables were three wheeled, multi-person, open to the air, vehicles. 100+ years ago they were exclusively leg-powered, and we are adding small electric motors, and maybe arm-cranks.This is the field which is being explored here. You can see some of my current work in building potential objects, which has given me a chance to research the various questions regarding the size of things and how they look and work. My preliminary results are at www.LightWheels.com As a former cabinetmaker, I may have an advantage here, but most of this work is well within the skill set of many people.
Put two (even maybe discarded) bikes together and you have a four-wheeled, stable, vehicle. From there it is up to you to figure out how this can become something else. A cooperative effort could bring together those with different skills and you’d require a certain amount of tolerance and ability to get along, but this is not impossible. Make something interesting, possibly beautiful, and name it after a local hero. Take some kids around in it. Or shut-ins who need a little fresh air. Who doesn’t need some of that?
SOCMO (Pronounced like the SOC in Social and MO in Mobility). SOCMO.
