How do you build a civilization from scratch? According to Open Source Ecology (OSE), the first step is building the right machines.
Started by Marcin Jakubowski in 2003, OSE is a network of farmers, architects, and engineers based in rural Missouri with branches in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and California. According to their website, their mission is “to create a collaborative economic platform that optimizes development, production, and distribution – via open source collaboration – to accelerate innovation to unprecedented levels.”
Basically, the idea is that a self-sufficient community requires proper tools and equipment, which within our current economy are prohibitively expensive both to purchase and maintain. By developing open source industrial machines, OSE hopes to reduce such expenses to a fraction of their current cost while simultaneously eliminating reliance on global corporations.
The eventual goal of OSE is to manufacture the Global Village Construction Set (GVSE), consisting of the fifty industrial machines they contend are essential not just for survival but also for establishing a thriving civilization. Machines can beget other machines, so the GVSE is paired down to the most fundamental equipment which could then be used to develop and build more sophisticated technology. Since OSE is dedicated to an open-source ideology, their plans are constantly being improved upon by their large community of supporters.
The OSE has the exciting potential to democratize industrial production and spurn innovation. As ecological and economic crises become more and more frequent, their work lays the ground for novel techniques of adaptation and self-sufficiency.
Watch Jakubowski deliver a TED Talk here:
3 Comments
Love this guy!!
machines are not the first step to a more open future.
the first step is much more difficult than that.
it involves the cultivation of open minds and common grounds.
collaboration with diverse others is the key.
... and access to land.
Democratizing industrial production is not building a civilization from scratch.
Accelerating innovation to unprecedented levels does not create self-sufficient community.
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