The OpenEverything Map: A material based social network to open everything and support Open Manufacturing & Distribution
Nathan W. Cravens
the Mutually Assured Production project. It was a very short e-mail
that read, "it's all about the farming, or at least the food
supply..." I totally agree. If we are to build an evolutionary free
production model MAP describes it could at least start with Opening
food and water. I had this in mind before, but Vanay was the reminder.
So after attempting to understand what it is Bryan Bishop was working
on, I went to the 'Open Design Communities for Physical Production' at
the P2P Foundation and searched the page for "food" and landed on the
subject titled "MollyMyerson on Local Food Mapping." (http://
papaya.podbean.com/2008/07/04/food-mapping-mollymyerson/) Here Molly
in a podcast interview talks on creating a social network interface
that can distribute locally grown food to other locals. This is a
great idea, especially since there are web based social networking
models like the Couch Surfing Project and a map interface like Google
Maps already in place.
You may have heard of the Couch Surfing Project. This is essentially a
form of Open Residency, temporarily free shelter for the traveling
"couch surfer." According to the website there were 646,877 successful
surf or host experiences with a half million "couches" available for
lodging. Based on the couch surfing model we know that it can work for
other things as well, namely food and water. So now here's where we
can take the ideas of CaseyFenton and Molly Myerson and universalize
the concept by creating a social network to acquire anything and
everything for zero financial cost.
Google Maps can find areas listed by address. Even with billions of
dollars in assets, Google has yet to realize that each address has
social networking potential. (unless they have a project along these
lines I'm not aware of) Not only can you find out where Farmer Joe
lives, you will later find out if farmer Joe has a surplus of apples
that didn't sell at the market now freely available on the 12th day of
June from 9am-2pm. If you where to search Google Maps for "apples" at
the time of this writing it will only display an address. Soon, a map
like a Google Map interface will provide an address and then might
ask, "would you like to find apples on the map?" Click the link and
the map fills with dozens of markers showing various addresses where
apples are distributed freely.
Perhaps you have a sweet tooth and want to see who's made a fresh
batch of chocolate chip cookies to share? Hey, and didn't your car
break down yesterday? No free cars in town? Oh, but look, here's a guy
who has set aside free time to work on cars at no charge. Now you need
the parts, "Aha! There they are, just a few miles away!" The potential
is endless.
With an easy to use interface, millions of willing participants, and a
decent search algorithm in place, anyone will be able to find for free
stuff by area, and if its not for free, the lowest price can be
located. The technology we have today is already very powerful, we've
just yet to tap it.
Let's look at this for the long run. Its important we build
sustainable manufacturing and distribution methods so we don't rely on
proprietary agencies. We may be able to save a few dollars on a great
many items usually sold. This will simultaneously force markets to
compete with the free model, lowering prices even further for items
that are freer than others, however, Open Manufacturing could still
use a boost as a community. By "a boost" I mean funding, since a
majority of activities are primarily dominated by proprietary agencies
at present.
So let's found an organization to fund open source manufacturing and
distribution (OMD) techniques by creating an Open Everything Map as a
free service, with Google maps and other social networking sites like
Couch Surfing as model. Those who find the free service useful and
wish to donate can easily do so, these funds can in turn provide an
funding for each OMD project that takes the proprietary funds and
turns it into open, self sustaining, freely available resource. (This
model could also provide a Basic Income for a general population, but
we'll save that for another discussion...)
Here's the circular model in a linear text based nutshell:
OpenEverything Map (OEM) > Happy participants give donations knowing
how the funds will be used > Distribute funds to OMD Project Members >
Members build and distribute their creations freely, this competes
with the market system. The competitive force I call 'zero-point
competition' will lower costs to fundOMD as it competes with markets
also lowering the cost of market goods OMD competes against. Each OMD
item will work to dissolve all market based supply chains > Repeat
until the OEM is personal and can produce virtually anything a human
might want for zero financial cost with an OpenEverything Map >
Who's has the leadership and networking skills to organize a team to
pursue this? Marcin? This is one way to accelerate Open Manufacturing
& Distribution development. This is technology and resources we
already have, we can start today.
I'd like to get a first reaction on this before I elaborate on the
finer details.
Chris Watkins
I'll mainly loiter and scan. It's not exactly in my main fields of interest, and reading long emails is a time commitment, but it is nonetheless interesting.
Nathan, when you say OpenEverything, are you aware of Open Everything? Interesting crowd It's just that if you're using the term in a slightly different sense (open every-physical-thing? open every-manufactured-thing?) then it's worth being aware of others using the term in a somewhat different way.
Chris
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)
Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.
Blog: chriswaterguy.livejournal.com/
Aiming for emails of 5 sentences or less - http://five.sentenc.es/
'They demanded bread and their method of making their protest was to burn down the bakery. - Ortega Y Gasset
Buying at Amazon, eBay etc? Start at http://appropedia.maatiam.com and support Appropedia - at no extra cost.
Nathan Cravens
I define Open Everything as zero financial cost for all things intellectual and physical with the understanding that all things may not be completely open, as in open source. If those in the Open Everything movement describe it differently, perhaps our definitions are compatible?
Nathan
Josef Davies-Coates
http://justfortheloveofit.org/
They have a nice map mashup that shows you members near you who are up for sharing stuff and helping each other out.
Also, I'm not sure (because I don't speak austrian) but I think my friend Paul's start-up http://mjam.at/ does the food delivery thing a bit like you describe.
Smiles,
Josef.
Bryan Bishop
> They have a nice map mashup that shows you members near you who are
> up for sharing stuff and helping each other out.
I've always wanted to wire up one of the DARPA Grand Challenge
autonomous vehicles to Google Maps and then to service locaters like
this. The Austin Robot Group's very own Bruce Waters suggested a CNC
router built into a car, since a car could be controlled in a specific
enough way to make patterns and so on with a very large momentum
already accessible and so on. If Bruce goes ahead with that sort of
project, it would be interesting to conduct miniature experiments to
show how all of these different structures can interpolate
automatically -- perhaps not with driving at this point, but simple
demonstrations showing how metadata formats to describe what something
is, and then how to get it (Google Maps and their path finder solution
engine) (or maybe just HTTP sometimes, like is already occuring) would
be a good start. Didn't people used to leave milk cartons out on their
front porch? "Milk bot" would have been a natural development, except
we stopped doing that for some reason. Would have been a good example.
- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/
Engineers: http://heybryan.org/exp.html
irc.freenode.net #hplusroadmap
Nathan W. Cravens
> > They have a nice map mashup that shows you members near you who are
> > up for sharing stuff and helping each other out.
>
> I've always wanted to wire up one of the DARPA Grand Challenge
> autonomous vehicles to Google Maps and then to service locaters like
> this. The Austin Robot Group's very own Bruce Waters suggested a CNC
> router built into a car, since a car could be controlled in a specific
> enough way to make patterns and so on with a very large momentum
> already accessible and so on. If Bruce goes ahead with that sort of
> project, it would be interesting to conduct miniature experiments to
> show how all of these different structures can interpolate
> automatically -- perhaps not with driving at this point, but simple
> demonstrations showing how metadata formats to describe what something
> is, and then how to get it (Google Maps and their path finder solution
> engine) (or maybe just HTTP sometimes, like is already occuring) would
> be a good start. Didn't people used to leave milk cartons out on their
> front porch? "Milk bot" would have been a natural development, except
> we stopped doing that for some reason. Would have been a good example.
Challenge has helped produce a car that drives in city traffic.
(however tens of thousands of dollars it may cost to produce) Merge
the two, the freeconomy map and driverless technology with a solar
power / hydrogen powered (fueled by water collected in transit). If
the vehicle can drive in traffic it can easy pickup and dropoff
items... Then give the vehicle an ability to assemble the parts...
So, let's call it, 'The Grand Freeconomy Challenge'. The challenge
will be to build an autonomous vehicle / fab lab that goes from place
to place picking up parts for free from various areas and fully
assembling another duplicate of itself.
This is just the synergy I was hoping for, and we're still a rather
small group at the moment. Now to go off into a cave to avoid the
prospect of a hurricane. Its time for a book reading binge. I'll be
away for the weekend. Tell your friends of this group. I look forward
to our conversations to come!
Cheers,
Nathan
Bryan Bishop
> > > They have a nice map mashup that shows you members near you who
> > > are up for sharing stuff and helping each other out.
> >
> > I've always wanted to wire up one of the DARPA Grand Challenge
> > autonomous vehicles to Google Maps and then to service locaters
> > like this. The Austin Robot Group's very own Bruce Waters suggested
> > a CNC router built into a car, since a car could be controlled in a
> > specific enough way to make patterns and so on with a very large
> > momentum already accessible and so on. If Bruce goes ahead with
> > that sort of project, it would be interesting to conduct miniature
> > experiments to show how all of these different structures can
> > interpolate automatically -- perhaps not with driving at this
> > point, but simple demonstrations showing how metadata formats to
> > describe what something is, and then how to get it (Google Maps and
> > their path finder solution engine) (or maybe just HTTP sometimes,
> > like is already occuring) would be a good start. Didn't people used
> > to leave milk cartons out on their front porch? "Milk bot" would
> > have been a natural development, except we stopped doing that for
> > some reason. Would have been a good example.
>
> Freeconomy has a good Map model to build from. The DARPA Grand
> Challenge has helped produce a car that drives in city traffic.
> (however tens of thousands of dollars it may cost to produce) Merge
DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles are in the millions of dollars range.
> the two, the freeconomy map and driverless technology with a solar
> power / hydrogen powered (fueled by water collected in transit). If
> the vehicle can drive in traffic it can easy pickup and dropoff
> items... Then give the vehicle an ability to assemble the parts...
>
> So, let's call it, 'The Grand Freeconomy Challenge'. The challenge
> will be to build an autonomous vehicle / fab lab that goes from place
> to place picking up parts for free from various areas and fully
> assembling another duplicate of itself.
The Replication Challenge already exists. ;-)
von Neumann Universal Constructor Prize
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/vncprize
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~douglasr/prize/
http://constructors.wikidot.com/
Anybody interested in replication needs to know the immediate difference
between Freitas' proposal of closure engineering for self-replication
versus the RepRap strategy. I wrote an email earlier this month about
this, which I'm copying/pasting below.
On Thursday 28 August 2008, "Charlie Manion" <cam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
There's some good names behind that server too.
http://www.islandone.org/
Artemis Society, the Dysons, Project Atlantis/Oceania, Hans Moravec,
etc. Actually, all of them.
I'm wondering who came up with this one:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/fig5-16.gif
mentioned at: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM53.html#533
Parts closure in theoretical self-replication studies:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM53.html#536
> Fundamental to the problem of designing self-replicating systems is
> the issue of closure.
>
> In its broadest sense, this issue reduces to the following question:
> Does system function (e.g., factory output) equal or exceed system
> structure (e.g., factory components or input needs)? If the answer is
> negative, the system cannot independently fully replicate itself; if
> positive, such replication may be possible.
>
> Consider, for example, the problem of parts closure. Imagine that the
> entire factory and all of its machines are broken down into their
> component parts. If the original factory cannot fabricate every one
> of these items, then parts closure does not exist and the system is
> not fully self-replicating .
I think that's a good way of saying it too.
> Partial closure results in a system which is only partially
> self-replicating. Some vital matter, energy, or information must be
> provided from the outside or the machine system will fail to
> reproduce.
But I disagree with that one. I wrote a page on my site a few months
back: http://heybryan.org/self_replication.html
> Another issue is that designing self-replicable processes/systems is
> that it is like poking a very specific target through a very very
> tiny pinhole on the size of a few angstroms, and you have this giant
> baseball bat and you're swinging away at it. Given some object that
> you want to replicate, like a rock, you can't just ask it nicely
> please, would you be so kind as to proceed to duplicate yourself?
> This isn't going to work out. You can try. I am not going to stop
> you. But it will not work. Maybe that's a good television show to try
> out? The Rock Whisperer. I don't know what it would be about. It's
> just a rock sitting there. The functionality (indeed what little a
> rock has in the first place) isn't going to allow it to
> self-replicate, and the basis/design of that object's (rock's)
> functionality isn't necessarily ever going to be extendable to an
> extent to allow self-replication.
>
> So, if you give the system some parts anyway, parts that it doesn't
> automatically make, and as long as that system can replace those same
> parts later in its life cycle, then this is kind of like
> "replicable-integration", yes? Does it then qualify as
> self-replicable?
Anyway, with 'computational engineering' as you called it, different
criteria could easily be applied to different systems under design.
There's a common technique in programming where you "score" results
from a generator of some dataset, same thing here. You'd choose some
metrics and then have the program crawl through the database of
processes and their implementations and have them connect together,
then splurge out the instructions to make the whole thing (i.e., walk
down the hall to the rapid prototyper is a good first step).
> It has been pointed out that if a system is "truly isolated in the
> thermodynamic sense and also perhaps in a more absolute sense (no
> exchange of information with the environment) then it cannot be
> self-replicating without violating the laws of thermodynamics"
> (Heer,1980). While this is true, it should be noted that a system
> which achieves complete "closure" is not "closed" or "isolated" in
> the classical sense. Materials, energy, and information still flow
> into the system which is thermodynamically "open"; these flows are of
> indigenous origin and may be managed autonomously by the SRS itself
> without need for direct human intervention.
>
> An approach to the problem of closure in real engineering-systems is
> to begin with the issue of parts closure by asking the question: can
> a set of machines produce all of its elements? If the manufacture of
> each part requires, on average, the addition of >1 new parts to
> product it, then an infinite number of parts are required in the
> initial system and complete closure cannot be achieved. On the other
> hand, if the mean number of new parts per original part is <1, then
> the design sequence converges to some finite ensemble of elements and
> bounded replication becomes possible.