If it’s true that what we are doing, while it may help many of us mitigate the chain reaction effects of collapse, might be too little, too late, then we need to really think hard about what will change that circumstance.
Lucas has been addressing this over at the Global Swadeshi Network, and I take many of his suggestions to heart: having products available for sale now; be available, via DVDs, booklets, etc.; and business models. This is all good stuff, but will it foment the revolution that we need?
Distributed fabrication can’t supplant the 20th century model, or even supplement it for that matter, if it doesn’t become part of the heart and soul of the sustainability movement. OSAT is a sub-set of that movement. On other fronts, the movement has articulated itself effectively. Permaculture is the first thing that comes to mind.
Have we successfully articulated the nature of this revolution? Gershenfeld has probably done more on this front than anybody I can think of. Partly because he’s high profile, and partly because he’s put personal fabrication in a historical context. I’ve taken a stab at this myself a couple of times (here and here).
Of course, where is Gershenfeld now that we need him most? Where is the heralded network of Fab Labs that was supposed to be the catalyst for our revolution? Marcin has said it quite clearly, and I wholeheartedly agree, that the design costs count for the vast majority of costs associated with new technology development. We need to reach a point where we can churn out AT prototypes on a dime; this was and is the promise of the Fab Lab. Are we focusing on individual technologies at the expense of the meta-techs that will accelerate the process by several orders of magnitude? Can we make it happen in 18 months?
6 responses to “We Need a Revolution”
Hi, I’ve replied at the globalswadeshi place, simply because it has a wider box and I can edit the post for 15 minutes after I write it. I always find things to add in the 15 minutes after I write anything. :blush:
You can copy anything over to here, of course. I mean, this is a mess anyway.
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/xn/detail/2097821:Comment:7881
Distributed fabrication as the heart and soul of the sustainability movement – I both agree and disagree.
In terms of design, yes – anything that makes it radically easier for more people to build and experiment with complex things has a huge potential impact on the product development process.
But once we have the design, much of the time it will be more efficient to mass-produce it.
Yes, and. We want/need the ability of being able to produce it at any scale. Hence OSat.
Of course I’d buy a readymade reprap, manual and all. And other things.
More at http://www.globalswadeshi.net/xn/detail/2097821:Comment:7961
I copy it here: Chris of Appropedia wrote at AgroBlogger’s blog how distributed fabrication is good for design and away-from-wide-market production, but at some point and for some things, mass production is ok. I’m rephrasing __heavily__. Conversation at http://www.agroblogger.com/2008/12/18/we-need-a-revolution/
Thing is, the whole ecosystem is, even now, full of working designs that are not available via mass production. Take solarcookers, or open-design stoves, or solar-stills, or toilets. Can’t find them at Walmart.
I think this is because of a few things. Markets work when production meets demand, or the other way round through advertising. Right now there’s no significant demand, no significant production, and no advertising.
Let’s take solarcookers. Let’s say you want to do business with them. Lots of business. You want to see how 10 million solarcookers are sold in the US alone. And another 10 million in Europe. How would you go about that? What would need to happen? If you play your cards right, you’ll sell maybe 1 million of all of that, while creating a larger market, but you’re interested in your 1 million, and couldn’t care less if other people make and sell 19 million more. After all, if you make 1 dollar/euro with each of those units, you make 1 million dollars/euros.
You could of course design “bundles”. Solarcooker plus open-design stove plus recipe-book plus games about the science behind solarcookers (for kids). Solarcookers with thermometers and other things. Do as you like, but you want to sell 1 million of those, making a profit of 1 dollar/euro with each unit. At least.
You can use viral marketing, twitter-marketing, high-profile marketing, whatever works.
Can it be done? Will it be done? Or are solarcooking folks focused (no pun intended) in the developing world only? Yes, solarcookers might be sold in a 1+1 way, so that customers will feel they are helping the poor. But we can also make it very clear that these technologies are good in their own right, for people in rich countries too. Rich people in rich countries, and poor people in rich countries.
What would it look like? We could have mass production. A factory to make solarcookers, package them and put them in stores. Or many small workshops closer to customers. There could be a solarcooker in every home, in every rooftop, in every car. There could be customers helping design the logo, the ads, the moto.
What would start it? What’s stopping it?
Open designs developed in a distributed way, and then all kinds of fabrication depending on demand. But right now “demand” depends on “awareness” and “availability”. No solarcookers or open-design stoves at Walmart. Partly because “availability” depends on “expected profit” and that’s not going to be huge, though of course there could be “solarcooker with manual”, or “recipe-book with solarcooker”. Maybe we could focus on a few technologies and see how they “should” or “would” work out? Just this business-model aspect needs a bit more room. Candidate technologies would be those for food (growing, storing, cooking), waste (composting, toilets), water (heating, desalinating, etc), etc.
For action on this, come participate in the world’s first open source village in the making. Now gathering an on-site development team. The only way this will happen is with people getting together in one location for a crash program on the Open Source Fab Lab.
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Fab_Lab