Crowdfunding “The Portal of Knowledge”

We will work together to create a creative and supportive society based on the sharing of knowledge and knowledge that must become the heritage of humanity and not at the exclusive service of a few elites.

Graziano

My name is Graziano Naressi and I was born in 1952 in Algrange (north of France) where I lived until 1965 when my family decided to return to Italy.

I am an industrial designer and teacher of technical drawing.  At some point in my life, I decided to share my knowledge and skills with those who need it most.

This choice led me to engage in international solidarity. Back in my homeland, I decided to pass on my skills and my projects to create a different community.

In 2021 I created the Facebook group “Il Portale dei Saperi” in Italian (The Portal of Knowledge).

Throughout 2022 I toured Italy spreading my projects in “open source” and the spirit of the Portal of Knowledge.

I believe that this is the most important project I have done in my life, and this will only be possible thanks to the help of many people who have supported me since the beginning of this dream.

Another world is possible if there are many of us who build it in the spirit of sharing and maximum mutual respect.

Knowlative

We use new technologies to help spread skills and knowledge but at the same time we make sure that the human and collaborative part is protected and preserved. CoVID 19 has had a profound impact on our lives, but it has helped us understand that we are a worldwide community and can connect, interact, and learn together, regardless of the physical distance between us.  We think computers and information technology are super useful tools, especially in these times; however, we look forward to meeting our whole “family” together “physically” whenever possible!

This project was opened to share our knowledge, our ideas, our projects, and our knowledge. It is not a political group or even a movement but a group of people who share the same ideals for a more just and supportive world.

The economic, social, and ecological situation we are facing requires a participation of many, willing to invent and apply new lifestyles, capable of satisfying in depth even the existential needs of people, in respect and collaboration with other individuals on earth.  If we choose a self-sustainable local development with technologies appropriate to the natural environment, we can indicate a series of criteria to be followed to increase the quality of the production system maintaining the health of the environment:

• The aims are to encourage, disseminate and facilitate the improvement of the quality of life through the self-production of goods.
• The Forgotten Knowledge and Know-How, (those that are often considered backward and unscientific), are instead important tools to free individuals from absolute dependence on goods and the market. Know-how is also the recovery of a set of traditional practices that have been handed down from father to son.
• The portal wants to be a tool, a stimulus for each brain to approach other brains.
• Today’s society, for its part, works on a system of possession of knowledge that enters into the logic of competition. It is therefore divided into classes of citizens recognized as worthy of knowledge and sub-citizens excluded from knowledge, not worthy of intervening in the functioning of society itself. Recognizing that every person brings knowledge and is suitable to transmit it, the Portal has the ambition to challenge this logic. The more this knowledge circulates and the more we navigate in knowledge, the more bonds of solidarity and co-responsibility are woven.  The main resistances to this philosophy of sharing derive from the rooting in our heads, from the first years of school of the principle of “each for himself”.

This “protectionist” principle produces the fear of losing one’s abilities if one shares knowledge with others. Faced with the observation of a reality governed by the laws of the jungle, in which the will to win prevails underlying the hierarchy of knowledge, three attitudes can be assumed:

• accept this rule of the game that suits me because I am in a favorable position.
• to take it into account as a reality from which one cannot escape, so as not to be put “out of the game”.
• reject this logic by asking myself what I can do to fight it and overthrow it!

European regulations on the warranty of household appliances and electronic devices do not go beyond the two-year requirement. This is, in fact, a license in favor of obsolescence. We work to buy what is built to break, so we will have to work harder to buy more items that will break.

And it is not just an objective necessity: this strategy, by lowering the quality and thus the cost of objects, has instilled in consumers the desire to own something always a little newer, a little better, and a little sooner than necessary, as was well understood by the American designer Brooks Stevens, who based a lecture on this concept in 1954. As a diametrically opposed example, it is interesting to know that in East Germany, before the fall of the Wall, by law refrigerators and washing machines had to last for at least 25 years.

If you notice, laws often talk about the scrapping of cars, appliances, TVs, etc., with the idea that the new products that will replace the old ones will be technologically more efficient, and perhaps consume less, but never is there any consideration of the consumption of raw materials, energy, machinery needed to produce the new products.

Too bad that with planned obsolescence we not only throw away objects, energy, natural resources, but also the time of our lives dedicated to producing and buying garbage-goods. In a word, we make our life insignificant.

To be precise, we sacrifice it to continue mass industrial production. The consumer, even the most attentive and aware, often does not have the information tools to defend himself and be able to choose what to buy.

Something rusted in the perfect machine of the system.

The consumer, in fact, is not only more attentive because he has less money to spend, but also begins to ask questions, he begins to realize that defending the rights of geographically distant workers also means protecting his own.

Certainly, until a few years ago, only a few people few were interested in origin, traceability, expiration dates, countries of origin of the producers, intermediate steps.

Nowadays, however more and more often, the label is the first thing that a consumer looks at before buying a product and s/he does it with a critical eye, because he wants to know, because he does not want to reward those who mistreat and exploit workers (often minors) and the environment. There is more and more interest on the so-called “Corporate Social Responsibility” nowadays on the agenda in the meetings of many industrial categories.

One thing is certain: after this pandemic, we must really reflect on the relationships we have with the economy, with the planet, and if we still deserve the nickname of “human beings”. For the first time in history, we are faced with the task of giving “body” to everything that constitutes the human dimension and experience, the nature of the human subject. In this reality of ours where everything seems to monetize and commodify, even people risk being treated as collective goods or individuals, remotely controlled by a system that is increasingly impoverishing humanity. We must recover the richness of human relationships that are fundamental to give flavor to life.