One evening some months back I had a marvelous dinner in Melbourne with Terry Cutler, a Board Member (at the time, acting as Chairman) of the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. In our enthusiastic exploration of the efficiencies and opportunities of rethinking innovation systems to embrace open systems and commons of capability, Terry posited that we needed not only BiOS (Biological Open Source) but EOS as well. Environmental or Energy Open Source (or Science). We were on the same page. If one were to argue that there is a fundamental and irreducible ‘commons’ on earth, it would be the commons of our shared environment, which is now profoundly threatened by global warming caused by short-sighted energy and environmental policies and practices.

Terry’s point was that EOS - (a Greek word for ‘dawn’: Ηώς, or Έως), was a logical extension of the BIOS (Greek for ‘life’: βiος) ideas that CAMBIA had been developing and promoting so widely.

Build a commons of capability around the shared imperative of environmental management and new energy options. And garner widespread international public support for EOS as an opportunity to build a common good that can and must provide the sustainable basis for economic and social well being.

We saw then that a merging of BIOS and EOS ideas was necessary to bring the innovative potential of the life sciences, energy sciences, environmental sciences, and materials, chemical, physical & nanosciences together to create new options.

In another blog I’ll describe what we have developed as the Apollo II. Biological Hydrogen Production from Sunlight.

Posted on February 28th, 2008 by Richard Jefferson
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Filed under: BiOS Licensing, EOS, General, Science