Think about a well, used to provide water.

Did you know that the word "well" was once used to quantify the beneficial "halo effect" provided by access to safe drinking water? The size of a community was limited to the number of those the community's well could serve - a great example of a "commons."

Additionally, the well (west Saxon: wielle) is the root of the word "welcome," which sounds very cozy when one thinks about the word printed on a welcome mat, but in fact: water will find its own way, with little regard for levees, dams, rail, freeways, and sometimes homes.

Indeed, recent research has demonstrated that ancient migratory routes mirrored subterranean waterways. As Ruth says: "waterways formed the first paths to market," and so it's not impossible to imagine how an embrace of these ancient waterways might form the basis of introducing a disruptive model for technological innovation.

Let's define this. Disruptive technology is an innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, industries, or businesses operate. A disruptive technology sweeps away the systems or habits it replaces because it has attributes that are recognizably superior.

In this episode, Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren discuss the status of two local "living laboratory" pilot communities which have chosen to join forces so they can better focus upon calibrating a local economic footprint to their local watershed.

In this manner, the community can launch a hyper-local marketplace to self-fund social programs, while setting aside resources for improving the ecological quality of the watershed within which they live.

A focus upon watershed transcends freeway and arbitrary neighborhood boundaries, and weaves together people from across the social and economic spectrum.

Also discussed is how this same "network effect" extends beyond Austin: because communities in other geographies (such as in Canada and North Carolina) aren't competitive, there's every reason for them to share innovations with one another, thus delivering upon the philosophy that the "rising tide lifts all boats."

This technology innovation thus introduces a model for what Ruth calls a "peace economy" which may serve to augment and potentially rival the existing war-based economy in a manner which may someday be acknowledged as "disruptive."