Forgetting the screwdriver
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
I was talking with Vinay earlier about the entire
materials/manufacturing thing, thought I'd post some of the thoughts
from that conversation:
I live in a fucked up place - it's a tiny island in the middle of the
Atlantic ocean, about 3 hours by boat south of mainland Iceland.
Recently, in the Fab Lab there, I built a table for the design computers
there... now the question of why we are bothering with all this
localized/distributed design stuff begs the question: Why should I spend
two hours designing a computer table and then spend 16000 kr on plywood
to make it if I can buy a similar table from Ikea for 10000 kr?
Plywood is usually 10% of that price in any non-remote place; any city
in the US will have a Home Depot... it just isn't a problem in those
places. But fucked up places are all over the fucking place - remote
outposts on the fringes of civilization (which is where all the cool
stuff happens if you ask me), but they suffer from a very deep feedstock
dependency. The only natural resources available on the islands are
fish, seabirds (e.g. puffin), sheep, and then lava rock (mostly
mercurite, which is comparatively rare) which tends to replenish itself
slightly too often for the inhabitant's taste (the last replenishment of
that supply was in 1973, when 400 houses got crushed...)
Consider for example places like Spitsbergen, Tristan da Cunha, St.
Helens, McMurdo, Tuvalu... what do you think the price of plywood is
there? And something like 20 million ppeopel live places like that...
The crux of this issue is that industry is designed for and built around
places with cheap feedstocks and expensive, slow logistics, so it comes
down to a question of scale. But focusing on these remote places - where
it's actually a challenge to acquire a 4x8 sheet of fiberboard, not to
mention something as profound as aluminum, MDF or acrylic - is actually
a pretty smart move because it's in places like those where the emphasis
on technological alternatives to expensive feedstocks are the most
important.
And note how this is the same question as "where are we going to get
cheap plywood when we colonize Mars?" Machining things still means you
need *things*
I wouldn't want to be on the colony ship that discovers, on arrival,
that they forgot to bring a screwdriver.
"what do you mean the fabricator file for chocolate is corrupted?"
(screams on deck)
Given the current industrial paradigm, we're all screwed. IKEA might
have it right for the big places, but for the smaller places we really
need to fix the broken dependencies.
We need Industry 2.0.
- Smári
- --
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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Bryan Bishop
> Given the current industrial paradigm, we're all screwed. IKEA might
> have it right for the big places, but for the smaller places we
Smári, I can't help but think that this is a problem when colonizing
lands and so on. Why colonize if the resources aren't actually there?
The only way that it would ever work out is if you're prepared to trade
for the materials you need until the end of time itself, right?
Has anyone else put some thought into making the high-altitude weather
balloons with simple automatic IR photography? I was thinking it might
be interesting to try to do scans for ground-level metals from high
altitudes and release this data as an overlay to Google Maps and so on.
[The big problem is the concept of "first come, first serve" when it
comes to land - most land is "owned" at the moment, meaning people with
guns will get angry at you for trying to do anything new. This is why I
suspect space is our opportunity to get a few things right coming up.]
- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/
Engineers: http://heybryan.org/exp.html
irc.freenode.net #hplusroadmap
Patrick Anderson
> most land is "owned" at the moment, meaning people with
> guns will get angry at you for trying to do anything new. This is why I
> suspect space is our opportunity to get a few things right coming up.
Is purchasing land as normal a cheaper and more realistic alternative
to leaving this planet?
Bryan Bishop
I'm not looking at it from a cost perspective, but if I was, I'd
probably consider materially rich land to be rather expensive. I
haven't actually looked, mind you. So please check my guess here.
Patrick Anderson
The following are some incomplete thoughts I've been mulling over for
some time...
Please let me know if they strike a chord.
The genetics of Cocoa, Dairy Cattle and Sugar Beets are ancient,
solar-powered, self-replicating factories for the raw materials of
chocolate.
Genetics are pure information that plants and fungus somehow 'apply'
to the minerals in the soil, water, sun and other rotting plants to
self-assemble.
Animals then consume these plants or other animals, thereby also
constructing themselves with those same minerals and of course
replicating through sex.
Information about how to process the raw cocoa and milk - along with
the designs of any needed equipment is also known or within reach for
the current fabrication of chocolate.
...
Love,
Patrick
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
I define digital fabrication thusly:
Digital fabrication is any process by which things come into existence
as the result of computation being performed on discrete elements.
Whereas, analogue fabrication is any process by which things come into
existence as the result of other things being HIT WITH A FUCKING HAMMER.
More or less.
What DNA is doing is essentially computation on atoms. Atoms in, atoms
out. Same amount of atoms, but slight variations in the arrangements.
The nodes stay the same but the edges change. The reason it works so
well is because it uses calm casual chemical processes with very low
levels of catalytic energy involved to build arbitrary structures.
Compare with, say, metalworking, where you use a LOT of energy to
melt/electrolyze/whatever the metal, or a LOT of force to hammer it into
a pleasing shape.
So what digital fabrication is all about is just that: Finding the soft
way to make things, and doing it computationally. Every atom being
deliberate. No accidents. (But occasionally errors!)
Right?
- Smári
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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Bryan Bishop
> Digital fabrication is any process by which things come into
> existence as the result of computation being performed on discrete
> elements.
>
> Whereas, analogue fabrication is any process by which things come
> into existence as the result of other things being HIT WITH A FUCKING
> HAMMER.
The point of Universal Turing Machines is that it doesn't matter what
the implementation of the computation is -- whether physical,
electronic, mechanical, cosmic -- pushing around stars --, whatever.
It's all the same thing; but when it comes to fabrication I'm not sure
the distinction here is as important. Aren't you making something in
the end that is not just the arrangement of electrons, i.e. some
electromechanical system, something interacting with the world beyond
the semiconductors?
> What DNA is doing is essentially computation on atoms. Atoms in,
> atoms out. Same amount of atoms, but slight variations in the
> arrangements. The nodes stay the same but the edges change. The
> reason it works so well is because it uses calm casual chemical
> processes with very low levels of catalytic energy involved to build
> arbitrary structures. Compare with, say, metalworking, where you use
> a LOT of energy to melt/electrolyze/whatever the metal, or a LOT of
> force to hammer it into a pleasing shape.
On an irrelevant note, my summer was spent studying the intersection of
computation and manufacturing in terms of DNA transcriptional switches
to guide the construction of in vitro Turing patterns over 2D surfaces.
So we're heading towards programmable computation ;-).
> So what digital fabrication is all about is just that: Finding the
> soft way to make things, and doing it computationally. Every atom
> being deliberate. No accidents. (But occasionally errors!)
That's an interesting formulation. How do you ensure that safety,
though? Consider the Material Safety Data Sheets. Even with their
widespread usage (by federal law in the U.S., for example) it's still
common to have accidents in the non-automated labs.
Helen Titchen Beeth
I haven't spoken up here yet because I have nothing to say on most of
the technical stuff you guys are talking about - though I'm trying to
follow the gist of what you're talking about and it's fascinating -
I've never thought about this stuff before! Thank you for opening my
eyes a crack.
I ended up on this list because I connected a few conversations - I
stayed because synchronicity brought me here and I trust that sooner
or later I will have something to contribute (in addition to being a
woman!)
So at this juncture I have something to say.
Bryan, you said "most land is "owned" at the moment, meaning people with
> why I
> suspect space is our opportunity to get a few things right coming
> up.]"
(which also makes culture) determines who owns guns and why. The
people with the guns won't be around forever, and people have been
known to get rid of their guns - even to give away their land and
their fortunes.
What concerns me more is that with global consciousness as it is now
(in acquisitive mode in most places on the planet), if open
manufacturing, 3-d printing and the like were to really succeed, we
wouldn't need rockets and NASA technology to get us into space - we'd
find ourselves there on the piles of stuff we manufacture!
How do you all see this question, my friends? In the delicate
environmental situation in which we find ourselves today, what will it
take for us to be wise about what we manufacture and in which
quantities?
:-)
h
Bryan Bishop
> What concerns me more is that with global consciousness as it is now
> (in acquisitive mode in most places on the planet), if open
> manufacturing, 3-d printing and the like were to really succeed, we
> wouldn't need rockets and NASA technology to get us into space - we'd
> find ourselves there on the piles of stuff we manufacture!
Right, that's why I've been keeping strong track of the "New Space"
scene. Check out some other mailing lists - listed at:
http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html
^ I'd especially recommend "arocket".
Or there's a giant linkdump I did at one point over at Open Source
Aerospace's wiki:
http://osaerospace.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Linkdumps
One of my favorite examples is Sugar Shot 2 Space:
http://sugarshot.org/
Vinay Gupta
Purchasing doesn't get you much freedom at all. Try something like:
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/free-guptastan-583
Which is a fairly credible plan for starting a new country in Africa
based on Free/Open principles.
Vinay
>
> >
Vinay Gupta
I rather prefer the swiss model, in which nearly every household has
an assault rifle, and therefore owning a gun confers no advantage in
a fight, resulting in a basically peaceful society.
Of course, for this to work requires a basically sane society: the
American drug policy insanity results in a very great deal of gun
violence.
But in the 20th century, roughly 160 million people were murdered by
their own governments, and nearly every one of them was first denied
the right to own a fire arm by law at some previous point, which made
them much easier to kill in the long run.
I think it's very important to understand firearms define your
ability to survive fascism or similar conditions breaking out in your
nation state: if the governments disarm, then the people might
consider it, but never before that point, please.
I realize this is a sensitive issue, but people really need to think
this stuff through in the light of 20th century history and
understand the relevance of personal firearms ownership to resisting
fascism and genocide, rather than thinking in more immediate terms.
http://armthevictims.org
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Helen Titchen Beeth
:-)
h
Patrick Anderson
> http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/free-guptastan-583
>
> Which is a fairly credible plan for starting a new country in Africa
> based on Free/Open principles.
At that link you end with "The hard part is finding 30,000 people
who'll invest $30,000 - $50,000 each in moving to Africa ...".
We can reduce both the number of people and the size of investment by
an order of magnitude if we just start where we already live.
3,000 people investing $3,000 each would be 9 Million dollars.
Certainly $9,000,000 is enough to buy some of land and capital
significant enough to begin Open Manufacturing - that is, if the
definition of 'Manufacturing' includes the output of useful living
organisms used for food, medicine, cloth, soap, building materials.
But that may be misunderstanding the scope of this Google Group.
Nathan,
Are you interested in discussing property ownership arrangements for
'Manufacturing' as mundane as pure agriculture, or would you rather
limit the discussions to man-made products only?
Sincerely,
Patrick
Vinay Gupta
I think intentional communities (what you seem to be discussing) like
The Farm solve a totally different problem to a WSLE.
People have been down this path before, and the intentional
communities movement continues to learn and grow, but it doesn't
solve any of the problems that are of deep interest to me right now.
If maybe 100 times the current number of people were living in
intentional communities, then maybe.
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Bryan Bishop
> Purchasing doesn't get you much freedom at all. Try something like:
>
> http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/free-guptastan-583
>
> Which is a fairly credible plan for starting a new country in Africa
> based on Free/Open principles.
How are the material resources there?
Vinay Gupta
Liberty is a very scarce but renewable resource. It's presence makes
the import of other material resources to support it feasible.
Part of what we're counting on is going to a place with *no*
resources, which makes it plausible that a government would give it
up in exchange for something it needs.
But this is all an aside...
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Bryan Bishop
> Part of what we're counting on is going to a place with *no*
> resources, which makes it plausible that a government would give it
> up in exchange for something it needs.
>
> But this is all an aside...
Not quite as much an aside as you might think; it was many years ago
that I was approached by a group doing somewhat the same thing with
some land in Chile. We were all becoming semi-polymaths with each other
to be able to pull it off, too. The concepts have stuck with me, and
I've been refining them ever since, so I'm glad to see some new
developments begin to take shape to make sure the effort isn't entirely
lost.
Vinay Gupta
<grin>
The dream never dies, but the empire does. Where are the rest of
these people now? What happened (or didn't!)
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Bryan Bishop
> The dream never dies, but the empire does. Where are the rest of
> these people now? What happened (or didn't!)
From all of those years, one conclusion that I am most satisfied drawing
is simply this: "Not Yet." More specifically, not then. Maybe now. I'm
still working on it, you see, but 'it' was never really about
colonizing Chile, that was just a means to an end. It was all about
entropy maximization - doing as much as possible. And if that meant
building colonies from the ground up, as if the beginnings of von
Neumann probes, then so be it.
Anyway, the others are now working from nine to five, and I'm not
entirely sure why. There were various projects, like an
MMORPG/simulator, resource allocation systems (in the supply chain
sense), plastics / algae / biofuel projects, etc.
Another anyway: most of my projects are 'recursive' in the sense that I
come back over them days, months, perhaps years later in some cyclic
fashion, mostly because people bring up the topics again and I have
some fresh input into the pot. So this is why those old projects seem
strikingly similar to the reformulations of them that I have now, even
if they were somewhat unintentionally the same thing. Funny how that
is .. ;-)
Vinay Gupta
hahahhahaha
Yeah, yeah, we've seen all that stuff float by in conversations -
there should be a game, we'll need CRP (country resource planning)
software, we'll need...
I think these things just haunt the realm of ideas until somebody's
crazy enough to build it.
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Nathan W. Cravens
>Given the current industrial paradigm, we're all screwed. IKEA might
>have it right for the big places, but for the smaller places we really
>need to fix the broken dependencies.
a great furious rath upon the objects of the ground. It was a reminder
that my surroundings here in Nacogdoches, Texas contain a great many
pine trees. This is easier to conclude when pine needles (called pine
straw by the locals, like 'myself') and small limbs engulf the floors
of the area. A few facilities here, including the university that
hosts my stay (unknowingly), are ingenious enough to run genorators,
but most buildings are dependant upon the centralized energy system
for electricity. On aside, they closed down Walmart because car
accidents where so frequent--another ailment of centralized
dependance.
As I bicycle through the neighborhood, I watch as the folk move the
fallen branches, allocating them into a neat little pile elsewhere.
One might call it, "putting things into place," compartmentalizing the
peices as they compartmentalize their own lives just as, they too, are
compartmentalized both biologically and socially...
Power outages are everywhere. The chatter seems to infer that many are
upset by this. This town, like many others affected by the hurricane,
are reminded of their dependence on external systems. I hear alot of
grumbling on the expected time the areas will have power. I've yet
heard anyone mention they'd like to get off the grid as not to face
future disadvantages or as I will typify the general intellect outside
the university, "The good Lord has blessed me, but garsh darnit, I got
to put me up some solar panels or something so I can save me some
money, and so I can watch TV. Because, you know, I work just so I can
get away from my wife and watch tv so I don't have to talk to my
children." Okay, so maybe that last sentence was just something I'd
like to hear more reflection on! If capital went bankrupt, and the
power companies said they're unable to make repairs, knowing that
electricity once existed, more people would be determined to get self
sustained energy, and maybe--just maybe--those more self sustained
would have love partners and children so they could spend time with
them.
I like the concept of "the low hanging fruit" to explain such
phenomenon. If its easier, do it. Or, "If I see it as an advantage,
I'll act upon it." It is both a virtue and a vice of what is otherwise
mused as "human nature."
Our goal is to make these self sustaining systems easier so the choice
is made obvious: self sustenance is the way to go. Because, you never
know, the grid just might lose its power. I've concluded that the grid
that represents proprietary agency (banks, government, business,
copyright, ect) must (and will) lose its power for good, or that it
must be known the grid will lose power, before a more diligent effort
is made for self sustaining systems.
We'll forget to bring the screwdriver many many times, and better yet,
as was asked by Vinay, what is this tool working on? And I would add,
why is it working on it?
Patrick wrote:
>Animals then consume these plants or other animals, thereby also
>constructing themselves with those same minerals and of course
>replicating through sex.
to talk about. Even though I see many women around campus wearing
hardly anything, much to my delight (usually), they portray facial
expressions of impenetrable, intangible approachability. I try to
remind myself that these attitudes reflect its social construct and
reinforcement. The outcome: Its beautiful, but you can't have it
without a price. It is beautiful, but there needn't a price, because
it is already paid for. We just need to cash the check, as it were. If
only it where that simple... But we can at least think: at one time,
cashing a check was impossible.
Smári wrote:
>Digital fabrication is any process by which things come into existence
>as the result of computation being performed on discrete elements.
>
>Digital fabrication is any process by which things come into existence
>as the result of computation being performed on discrete elements.
>Whereas, analogue fabrication is any process by which things come into
>existence as the result of other things being HIT WITH A FUCKING HAMMER.
is my God given duty to inform you that, with the use of such foul and
perverse language, I question your moral dignity sir! ;P
Helen wrote:
>Guns aren't what define people - consciousness is. Consciousness
>(which also makes culture) determines who owns guns and why. The
>people with the guns won't be around forever, and people have been
>known to get rid of their guns - even to give away their land and
>their fortunes.
>What concerns me more is that with global consciousness as it is now
>(in acquisitive mode in most places on the planet), if open
>manufacturing, 3-d printing and the like were to really succeed, we
>wouldn't need rockets and NASA technology to get us into space - we'd
>find ourselves there on the piles of stuff we manufacture!
>How do you all see this question, my friends? In the delicate
>environmental situation in which we find ourselves today, what will it
>take for us to be wise about what we manufacture and in which
>quantities?
through desperation. When markets start crashing, whether it be
because a working class no longer sustains it or physical resources
verge, we must will greater modes of self-sustenance into existence as
the populace grows, or perish.
Vinay wrote:
>I rather prefer the swiss model, in which nearly every household has
>an assault rifle, and therefore owning a gun confers no advantage in
>a fight, resulting in a basically peaceful society.
>
>ability to survive fascism or similar conditions breaking out in your
>nation state: if the governments disarm, then the people might
>consider it, but never before that point, please.
how warranted or justified.
Why do we want to use guns? Guns are used as a method of attaining
scarce resources, physical and intellectual. Once resources both
physical and intellectual are abundant, guns will fade away.
Concerning forms of fascist decision making, I don't see governments
ever putting people into forced labor camps in Industrialized
countries. Labor is becoming chump change. If a Basic Income and P2P
is deemed unsustainable, I can see governments forcing those without
capital into little compartments and left to fend for themselves as
capitalists turn willingly into cyberspace, leaving the formerly
impoverished human race to inherit the Earth.
As labor becomes further and further deskilled into nothing, the alarm
will ring louder and louder for economic change. I don't see open
systems sustaining us in the way Industrial society does before Basic
Income is necessitated. I only hope that governments and capitalists
see the value in Basic Income so we can live without fascists regimes
and further develop open systems. Basic Income, P2P, self-sustaining
systems, can prevent fascist activity from taking control.
Patrick wrote:
>Nathan,
>Are you interested in discussing property ownership arrangements for
>'Manufacturing' as mundane as pure agriculture, or would you rather
>limit the discussions to man-made products only?
your question. I'd like to answer you more specifically, however.
Would you rephrase the question, Patrick? I'd like to better
understand what you're asking.
Vinay wrote:
>People have been down this path before, and the intentional
>communities movement continues to learn and grow, but it doesn't
>solve any of the problems that are of deep interest to me right now.
>If maybe 100 times the current number of people were living in
>intentional communities, then maybe.
>the import of other material resources to support it feasible.
>resources, which makes it plausible that a government would give it
>up in exchange for something it needs.
>But this is all an aside...
>Not quite as much an aside as you might think; it was many years ago
>that I was approached by a group doing somewhat the same thing with
>some land in Chile. We were all becoming semi-polymaths with each other
>to be able to pull it off, too. The concepts have stuck with me, and
>I've been refining them ever since, so I'm glad to see some new
>developments begin to take shape to make sure the effort isn't entirely
>lost.
>The dream never dies, but the empire does. Where are the rest of
>these people now? What happened (or didn't!)
>
Marcin's approach, Factor-E Farm comes to mind here. I'm all for
creating these off grid communities. They give the capitalist system
some competition, lowering prices in Industrial societies to compete
with Open Villages. Competition of this type is good for us, bad for
capital. Go us!
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
Nathan W. Cravens wrote:
> Over the weekend Hurricane Ike blew in from the Gulf bringing with it
> a great furious rath upon the objects of the ground. It was a reminder
> that my surroundings here in Nacogdoches, Texas contain a great many
> pine trees. This is easier to conclude when pine needles (called pine
> straw by the locals, like 'myself') and small limbs engulf the floors
> of the area. A few facilities here, including the university that
> hosts my stay (unknowingly), are ingenious enough to run genorators,
> but most buildings are dependant upon the centralized energy system
> for electricity. On aside, they closed down Walmart because car
> accidents where so frequent--another ailment of centralized
> dependance.
Thanks for this retelling.
> We'll forget to bring the screwdriver many many times, and better yet,
> as was asked by Vinay, what is this tool working on? And I would add,
> why is it working on it?
Important thoughts, important questions.
> Smári wrote:
>> SNIP
> As administrator of this forum, the one with the inflatable hammer, it
> is my God given duty to inform you that, with the use of such foul and
> perverse language, I question your moral dignity sir! ;P
What's this 'god' thing? My moral dignity is not defined by such... this
is off-topic.
> Concerning forms of fascist decision making, I don't see governments
> ever putting people into forced labor camps in Industrialized
> countries. Labor is becoming chump change. If a Basic Income and P2P
> is deemed unsustainable, I can see governments forcing those without
> capital into little compartments and left to fend for themselves as
> capitalists turn willingly into cyberspace, leaving the formerly
> impoverished human race to inherit the Earth.
Actually, look at Brazil after the Juntas in the 1960's, Chile after
Pinochet took over, Argentina around the same era, Bolivia.. look at
Poland in the 1980's, modern Russia. Look at Apartheid era South Africa.
China is also fun to look at, and Suharto's Indonesia. And if you're
feeling adventurous, read the constitution of the United States, which
doesn't exactly forbid the existence of forced labor camps, just
requires a certain amount of preprocessing.
All of the examples above are "Industrialized" countries, and I didn't
even mention WWII era when we had Germany, Italy, Japan, and half a
dozen other countries competing to perform atrocities.
The only thing you can really question here is the level of "force" - is
it forceful only to, say, lock people up in a pen and tell them to mine,
as was done in Chile, or is it also forceful to offer people only the
options of starvation versus very damaging work and too much of it?
> As labor becomes further and further deskilled into nothing, the alarm
> will ring louder and louder for economic change. I don't see open
> systems sustaining us in the way Industrial society does before Basic
> Income is necessitated. I only hope that governments and capitalists
> see the value in Basic Income so we can live without fascists regimes
> and further develop open systems. Basic Income, P2P, self-sustaining
> systems, can prevent fascist activity from taking control.
Basic Income, not entirely unlike what you describe in MAP, exists in
all Scandinavian countries. It isn't enough. Trust me. :)
- Smári
- --
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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Josef Davies-Coates
Aren't you statistically much more likely to get shot if you own a gun?
And, frankly, what use is a gun against a tank or jet fighter?
Although, I heard the knife was the secret weapon that kept US at bay in 'nam.
Josef.
Vinay Gupta
Nathan,
The USA is slipping into fascism right now. Germany was an industrial
powerhouse. China is massively totalitarian, and quite industrialized
in, well, an area roughly the size of europe.
As for guns, it's very simple: if somebody wants to hurt me, whoever
it is, I should have the right to defend myself. Part of that right
includes having the *capability.* That capability is typically
represented as the ownership and ability to use a firearm, because
anything less doesn't represent real defensive capabilities against
people who are serious.
I want to put this in perspective for you: government murder of their
own citizens killed something like **four times as many people as
were killed in wars** in the 20th century. Just take that in: four
times more people died in death camps and forced famines than died in
WW1, WW2 and all the rest combined, mainly in Russian and China,
Germany's a close third.
This is one of two central facts about the 20th century: (mostly
communist) governments murdered 160 million people in death camps,
and governments held the entire world under the threat of a planetary
nuclear holocaust, total human murder, threatening to sterilize the
planet, while they argued about how to divide up economic scarcity in
their populations. (aka the Cold War.)
From any rational perspective, both of these acts by government were
utter madness, and it's the duty of every thinking human being to be
at best skeptical, and at worst outright hostile, to the accumulation
of power in the hands of such irresponsible entities. I've done, what
I can from time to time to try and improve their models of the
universe, but fundamentally it's all based on the Divine Right of
Kings and murder-on-command, and there are limits to what can be done
with that.
Finally, nobody has the right to disarm me in a world where things
like the death camps happened. Nobody, and I mean **NOBODY** can tell
me that there's no scenario in which I, or somebody else, might be
fighting to the death against government troops who'd kill me because
I'm brown, or hindu, or a member of the wrong political party, or
sympathetic to gay rights and abortion, or because I have an
education. In Cambodia, Pol Pot had them kill everybody who wore
glasses.
Has this stopped? Something like four million people were killed with
machetes in the Rwanda not that long ago, in 1994. The international
community did nothing. Right now, the clusterfuck in Darfur continues
because one side has weapons, and the other does not.
All of the bullshit about "send in peacekeepers" misses a very simple
truth: give the people rifles, and they will defend themselves. The
worst abuses happen when one side is armed, and the other is not.
I, personally, would wish to own a rifle if I lived in Africa. I'd
quite like to own one living in Europe because there are still people
alive who saw the inside of a death camp. Within living memory, the
need to fight to the death against those who would make life a hell,
and follow it by death, was very, very real.
Pay attention to history. Every idiot who thinks that rifles are
unimportant makes it harder for the rest of us to exercise our human
right to live and die safe from the predations of mass murdering
governments or sectarian violence, which are *acute* and *massive*
threats in many parts of the world.
The inherent right of a person to defend themselves from those who
wish to harm them is absolute. To take it away from people,
particularly given the history of the 20th century, is as bad or even
worse than taking away their right to free speech, and I take it as a
personal responsibility to educate people on the history which is so
often glossed over, and on the path not taken: arms for all, and an
end to government massacres of their citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising
Note how the lack of available weapons was a critical part of the
problem that the Jews faced i holding back the Nazis. If every Jew
had a rifle, how far do you think Hitler would have got in the plan
to exterminate them. If you think rifles inherently cause violence,
then ask yourself why Switzerland has very little gun crime.
The ability of people to successfully resist untrustworthy and
occasionally genocidal governments is very important. I'm sorry if my
stance on this disturbs you, but when I meet people who are against
the human right of self defense, I feel like I'm meeting people who
believe that free speech should be limited because, well, ideas are
dangerous.
The only person who has anything to fear from me and my rifle is the
person who would harm me. Alas, I've never been in an area where the
local thugs (by which I mean the government) would permit me to own
one, which means I have never been free.
Acute political awareness is painful. But if America slides into
theocracy, I think that you will be glad of every rifle in the hands
of people who believe in things like women's rights, emancipation,
religious diversity and every other basic human virtue which the
state may try and take away.
Work through your discomfort, think rationally about the issues, and
tell me: who has the right to strip a population of arms and render
them helpless to resist government oppression, given the history of
the 20th century. Certainly not the governments, who are the greatest
threat to our liberty and our welfare.
It's every human's responsibility to stand up for our human rights.
Self defense is a human right, and you're letting the side down, man.
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Vinay Gupta
That is a very American viewpoint (how come you sound Scottish? :P)
Aren't you statistically much more likely to get shot if you own a gun?
And, frankly, what use is a gun against a tank or jet fighter?
Although, I heard the knife was the secret weapon that kept US at bay in 'nam.
Josef Davies-Coates
That is a very American viewpoint (how come you sound Scottish? :P)I was born in Scotland, but ideologically converted to American values after I realized, after five years in America, that I was happy because there was no class system radiating out from the Queen telling me that I could not be who I wanted to be because of my place of birth in the social hierarchy. Then I worked through much of the rest of their thinking and came to the conclusion that they were right about damn near everything. I think Jefferson is a significantly better political thinker than Gandhi, for example, but the ideals are harder to manifest in some ways.
Interesting.
How has America got things so drastically wrong then?
I mean, the US isn't too far behind China in state killings of people, and are world leaders of imprisonment and inequality, no?
I guess being a white male Londoner with a fairly aristocratic background on my Dad's side has meant I've not really noticed the Queen all that much in my own life.
Anyway, unless we're going to discuss *fabricating* weapons, I think we ought to move on to something else.
Fair point. :)
Just wanted to ask: have you seen the film Coconut Revolution? They do manufacture their own weapons (and much else besides). Remarkable story of resilience against all odds :)
Josef.
Vinay Gupta
Just wanted to ask: have you seen the film Coconut Revolution? They do manufacture their own weapons (and much else besides). Remarkable story of resilience against all odds :)
How has America got things so drastically wrong then?
I mean, the US isn't too far behind China in state killings of people, and are world leaders of imprisonment and inequality, no?
I guess being a white male Londoner with a fairly aristocratic background on my Dad's side has meant I've not really noticed the Queen all that much in my own life.
Vinay Gupta
PS: everything is all fucked up around sex because we've got 100K
years of human evolution without birth control to contend with.
Maternal mortality rates (death in childbirth) typically hovered
around 1 in 10 in the pre-medical age, with about a 1 in 3 chance of
conception in any given month of sexual activity, and a significant
chance of conception from even a single event given that people tend
to (unconsciously) increase sexual activity around ovulation.
Run the numbers, and a woman could expect about a 3% chance of dying
from any given sexual encounter. As a result, there's a lot of desire
and aversion involved, a lot of very deep unconscious evaluation of
the cost/benefit of taking such a risk.
Now we add birth control to the mix, and the conscious equations all
change, but unconsciously there's still the realistic evaluation of
risk/benefit from prior times, bred in through countless generations.
That disconnect between the cultural reality of sex (relatively
casual) and the biological expectation (sex => pregnancy => risk of
death in childbirth plus all the other factors) is extremely poorly
resolved in most people because they just don't have much conscious
awareness of the instinctive parts of their being.
I'm not sure that very much of the cultural work done around
sexuality in the age of birth control really addresses these issues.
The sexual revolution in America seems (to me) to be a failure, in
that I don't see anybody particularly delighted about their sex lives
on the whole - mainly people seem to be struggling with the general
perception that sex should be widely available and easy, and the
reality that people just aren't built for consequence-free sex, and
now that it's possible to have it, maybe it's not what a lot of
people want, and for those who do, there's some biological instinct
stuff that has to be worked with or managed.
The disinhibiting effects of alcohol are being thrown into this mix,
again, on average and at a cultural level, to bridge the gap in
consciousness between the basic "let's get laid" biological level,
the countervailing "no wait" force (mainly present in women, who have
a lot more risk) and the rational mind which generally goes with what
it thinks is socially acceptable. Given that free sexual activity is
more acceptable when booze is involved, and that booze kills
inhibitory drives in general...
I don't think any good is coming of this approach, but the
alternatives take real work.
Anyway, another long aside, sorry, I'm getting ready to write
software, and I often spend a lot of time thinking about other things
first <grin>
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Josef Davies-Coates
There is a funny line in a track by a friend of mine (DJ Rubbish) about GW Bush signing away the deaths of for over 400 people whilst governor of texas or something that ends with "did he hold the crayon himself?" Made me laugh anyway :)
A lot of the early settlers and founding fathers believed in top-down authoritarian Church control. I read a nice quick history of Empire (with a focus on America) in The Great Turning by David Korten http://uniteddiversity.com/the-great-turning/ - nice video clips and a good read :)
Just to keep it on topic: is it fair to assume that people here see the potential of open manufacturing to help end the age of Empire?
:)
Vinay Gupta
Kevin Carson
> I rather prefer the swiss model, in which nearly every household has
> an assault rifle, and therefore owning a gun confers no advantage in
> a fight, resulting in a basically peaceful society.
>
> Of course, for this to work requires a basically sane society: the
> American drug policy insanity results in a very great deal of gun
> violence.
>
> But in the 20th century, roughly 160 million people were murdered by
> their own governments, and nearly every one of them was first denied
> the right to own a fire arm by law at some previous point, which made
> them much easier to kill in the long run.
On a somewhat related topic, I just got a summons to jury duty. I'm a
prosecutor's worst nightmare: I believe in jury nullification of
unjust laws, I've got a *very* low threshold for reasonable doubt, and
I take an absolutist position on issues of search and seizure and
other common law due process rights. I'm the guy who would result in
a hung jury in almost every case.
But I recognize that under my rules, it would be extremely difficult
to to apprehend and convict even the guilty--the old "let ten guilty
go free lest one innocent be punished" maxim taken literally. So the
alternative is a shift of the burden of fighting crime to apprehension
and punishment after the fact, to preventive measures by society at
large: 1) an armed citizenry; 2) neighborhood watches and other
social cooperation to deter or forestall crime; and 3) a greater onus
on the individual to use common sense in things like burglar-proofing
homes, keeping his eyes open, and not going into dangerous places.
Like you, I think we'd have a lot less violent crime if the average
mark or victim were assumed to be armed, and if the government weren't
actively promoting organized crime by creating black markets in things
that are nobody's damned business.
--
Kevin Carson
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Anarchist Organization Theory Project
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
Vinay Gupta
Agreed on all counts, please try not to get arrested in the process
of, ahem, doing your duty at the court, eh?
GRRR!
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Kevin Carson
> The USA is slipping into fascism right now. Germany was an industrial
> powerhouse. China is massively totalitarian, and quite industrialized
> in, well, an area roughly the size of europe.
Starting with the McCarran Internal Security Act, we've had legal
provisions for detaining "subversives" without trial in the event of a
"national emergency." And starting with the Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations, there have been numerous executive orders providing
for the nationalization of the entire economy and society under
dictatorial executive power, in the event of such an emergency. Under
LBJ and Nixon, the feds began developing detailed contingency plans
for martial law, in cooperation with state and local law enforcement,
and even conducting martial law exercises that involved mass detention
without trial. Under Clinton, we had "counter-terrorism" legislation
that enabled the president to classify any organization as "terrorist"
entirely by fiat, and then to seize all its assets by civil forfeiture
without ever having to prove them guilty to a jury. Bush managed to
railroad through, in USA PATRIOT, all the stuff Congress left on the
cutting room floor in Clinton's counter-terrorism bill. And through
legislative emasculation of the principle of posse comitatus, the Bush
administration has greatly increased the "normalcy" of martial law and
lowered the threshold of implementing it on a local and piecemeal
basis.
America has repeatedly practiced police statism at the federal level
(just Google "Palmer Raids"--and I'm sure you're already familiar with
the mass internment of Japanese-Americans).
And we're already UNDER fascism at a local level, if you look at
things like the militarization of police and abuse of SWAT teams under
the drug war, civil forfeiture, no-knock warrants, the erosion of
Fourth Amendment guarantees by "reasonable expectation of privacy"
lacunae, random checkpoints, corruptions of the process like
entrapment and sting operations, use of jailhouse snitches, plea
bargain blackmail, abuse of tasers, planting evidence, etc., etc.,
etc.
I wrote about the history of martial law planning, and all this other
stuff, in great detail here:
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/08/fighting-domestic-enemy-you.html
So contra Nathan, it's the present possession of firearms by local,
state and federal jackboots that I find terribly disturbing.
What's more, as the Empire and its resources are stretched to the
breaking point, and corporate capitalism reaches a series of input
crises (including Peak Oil, but also all the other state-subsidized
inputs for which the demand is expanding faster than the state can
supply them), I believe ruling elites will be sorely tempted to resort
to authoritarianism to stave off collapse. What with their recent
Chapter Thirteen Debt Slavery (oops, "bankruptcy reform") legislation
and all, they'd probably like nothing better than to be able to put up
barbed wire around entire subdivisions and turn them into open-air
prisons, as a majority of the population defaults on their mortgages.
And I believe they'd do it--if the costs and risks were perceived as
being low enough. But the costs are perceived as significant, and one
of the biggest jokers in the deck is a civilian population with more
small arms than all the standing armies in the world put together. A
disaffected American population, if all the "patriotic" agit-prop
failed to pacify them, might create the equivalent of twenty Vietnams
or Afghanistans at once. And so the state capitalist ruling class is
as prone to the "boiled frog syndrome" as the population at large.
Martial law is a mighty big gamble, all or nothing, a one time thing,
and if you lose you lose BIG--as in Cabinet, Pentagon, and CIA
officials, corporate CEOs, and all the rest being hauled in front of
revolutionary tribunals, that kind of big. So the big boys are always
going to want to believe the final crisis of corporate capitalism is
*not quite* here, and they don't have to resort to the
Samson-in-the-Temple scenario *quite* yet. And widespread gun
ownership is one of those things that increases their incentive to
adopt the "wait a little longer" posture.
With luck, they'll be deterred long enough that by the time the final
crisis hits and they realize it's too late, the "foundation of the new
society" will have already been mostly built in "the shell of the
old," the infrastructure of the new society will be largely in place,
the transition to the new post-capitalist society will be fairly
rapid, and the old ruling class's attempts at revolution will be
feeble and sporadic rearguard actions.
Vinay Gupta
You know, I sort of hum the general tune, but it's lovely to have
somebody who knows the words (i.e. the detailed history) tell it.
Good stuff.
We've gotta meet sometime. Ever get an excuse to come to Iceland?
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Kevin Carson
> I like the concept of "the low hanging fruit" to explain such
> phenomenon. If its easier, do it. Or, "If I see it as an advantage,
> I'll act upon it." It is both a virtue and a vice of what is otherwise
> mused as "human nature."
Re "low hanging fruit," IMO one of the most effective early uses of
small-scale production technology is not the manufature of complete
products in competition with corporate-manufactured commodities, but
the much more cost-effective machining of replacement parts to keep
entire corporate-manufactured appliances running.
This is how Jane Jacobs describes the origins of the Japanese bicycle
industry. The bicycles were imported from manufacturers in the West.
The neoliberal model of industrialization (and the "industrial parks
plus corporate welfare" model of local economic development by
corporate colonization prevalent in the U.S.) would have been to
invite some TNC in to build a big plant. In Japan, the owners of
small bicycle repair shops started custom machining spare parts, with
individual shop owners over time working out a division of labor in
which each specialized in some particular part. Over time, this
division of labor resulted in the entire network of shops having the
resources to produce most or all of the parts of the bike. So such
remanufacture of spare parts for appliances might eventually evolve
into networked production on the Emilia-Romagna model.
A number of writers on decentralist economic issues (Kirkpatrick Sale,
Karl Hess, Colin Ward and Keith Paton) have suggested neighborhood
repair, recycling, and remanufacturing centers for putting out of
order appliances back into operation. And most of the above have
suggested coupling them with neighborhood warehouses of leftover
materials (a few pieces of scrap lumber, part of a spool of wire, a
small pile of bricks, etc.) from other building projects, along with
all the broken appliances that would ordinarily be discarded as "not
worth fixing."
So part of the problem of the cost and scarcity of feedstock might be
to use distributed production first of all for the recycling and
cannibalization of the waste byproducts of capitalism. Simply being
more efficient than they are at using all the shit they throw away,
reducing the demand for new stuff, reducing the supply of wage labor
by the portion of our needs that we supply for ourself by such means
rather than buying it with wages--all this will increase the
independence and bargaining power of labor, make the capitalist model
of production increasingly costly and untenable, and shift the
competitive advantage away from large-scale industrial production to
the informal/household/barter sector.
Corporate capital tends to try to economize on labor inputs while
being extremely prodigal with material inputs, because of its
privileged access to below-cost land and capital. The alternative
economy, on the other hand, must have high efficiencies in the use of
material inputs because of the artificial cost and scarcity of them.
So the more of the labor force is withdrawn from the capitalist wage
system to more efficient small-scale production for the alternative
economy, the more the capitalists are left with accumulated capital
and land on their hands that they can't find enough labor to work for
them, and no labor at all on profitable terms. And this will create a
virtuous cycle as the cost advantage shifts still more to
decentralized production, and becomes the primary source of supply as
corporate suppliers dry up and go bankrupt. Ideally, the giant,
unused factories and factory farmland will be the last things to fall
to the alternative economy, after they've become islands in a hostile
sea (kind of like the U.S. embassy in Saigon). This last could be
relatively peaceful, on the Argenine pattern, as workers simply reopen
factories that have been boarded up and abandoned.
Kevin Carson
>
>
> You know, I sort of hum the general tune, but it's lovely to have
> somebody who knows the words (i.e. the detailed history) tell it.
>
> Good stuff.
>
> We've gotta meet sometime. Ever get an excuse to come to Iceland?
I can't imagine ever travelling there, but from what I've read it
seems like a fascinating country. Especially being out of the way and
resource-poor enough that none of the big boys wants it (except as a
geographical asset for naval control of the North Atlantic, I guess).
Vinay Gupta
<grin>
Well, I'll come visit with you in America in 2016.
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Kevin Carson
> Well, I'll come visit with you in America in 2016.
Great--assuming, of course, you're not on the no-fly list and the
Homeland Security forced labor camps aren't up and running.
Herbert Snorrason
> I can't imagine ever travelling there, but from what I've read it
> seems like a fascinating country. Especially being out of the way and
> resource-poor enough that none of the big boys wants it (except as a
> geographical asset for naval control of the North Atlantic, I guess).
base enforcing segregation through most of the sixties here, and both
the KGB and CIA had a more-or-less constant presence at their
respective embassies through much of the cold war. We were one of the
neutral countries invaded during WWII, and Allied control here quite
likely kept the most dangerous ships of the German fleet at bay.
So "asset for naval control of the North Atlantic" isn't
insignificant. Of course, it helped that we had rather pro-U.S.
governments since around that time. I wonder why that is…
(Sorry for the sidenote. I just happen to be an Icelandic student of
history.)
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
Friends, I give you: Basalt fiber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber
Why didn't I know of this before?!
I met today with a man (named Þorsteinn) who's working on putting a
basalt fiber factory up in Iceland. The story he told me was of a
conversation he had with an American intending to invest in one in Poland.
Þorsteinn: You should build it in Iceland instead.
American: But what would Iceland be willing to do for us in return?
Þorsteinn: Well, what is poland going to do?
American: They're going to put train tracks right up to the factory.
Þorsteinn: What for?
American: To transport the stuff.
Þorsteinn: Why not just build the factory near the sea and dump it
directly onto ships?
American: They're going to do that, but the train tracks are for the basalt.
Þorsteinn: Why?
American: To transport it, of course.
Þorsteinn: From where?
American: Siberia.
... long pause.
Þorsteinn: Why not just build it in Iceland?
Iceland is literally made of basalt of the exact grade for this kind of
venture. But it turns out that the key to basalt fiber is the
crystalline structure, and while "traditionally" (the tradition isn't
very long) it's only a set of something like three types of basaltic
rock heated to around 1200-1400°C, apparently if you heat it to around
1600-1800°C you can actually control the conditions it cools under,
making whichever crystal structures you want.
The point here being that you should be able to make this stuff anywhere
were you have basalt, which excludes places like Hawaii but includes
most of the planet, not to mention the moon. So, homework for the
willing: Figure out a way to make basalt fiber on a small scale.
I've got lots of data coming over the wires about this; will share on
request.
I'm telling you, we're going to be knitting buildings by the end of the
next decade.
- Smári
- --
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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Vinay Gupta
Very, very cool indeed, Smari. Are there any safety issues (ala
asbestos) or is this a direct replacement for carbon fiber in safety
terms too?
And, yeah, that's a fantastic conversation. It's not often you find a
manufacturing industry area where Iceland genuinely has massive
natural advantages!
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Nathan W. Cravens
that people should have the ability to defend themselves from harm,
whether from fascist governments or otherwise. Only, I still strongly
disagree with the use of lethal weaponry by anyone, even in defense. I
would urge instead the development of non-lethal methods of
protection, something for another talk.
Until then, as long as governments have lethal weapons, I agree,
individuals must also have the same lethal ability. I'm still
ambivalent about that stance. As I've said, I'd prefer we not have
guns or any need to use them in the first place.
I'd much rather discuss how to prevent governments from bringing harm
to the people it dominates, the citizens and what governments
determine of economic interest. Banks and business use governments to
maintain survival and 'growth'. So, it is important that we look to
the agencies that manipulate the arms of government and prevent
violent action. Its essential we squelch the violent agent at the
source rather than use guns as a last resort.
Provide freely available methods of sustenance to everyone, beginning
in key areas like food, water, shelter; expanding outward to provide a
base for a variety of open manufacturing groups to develop their own
nitch and create the best thing that is of interest to that group.
Kids in destitute are too often convinced the military is "the only
option" to get out of poverty. The methods we as a community produce
and distribute will become comparable and exceed those of proprietary
means, so the financially poor, those that perform a majority of the
killing, will be less likely to perform the lethal functions of
governments until governments as we presently understand them are no
longer necessary for regulatory function.
Open Manufacturing and the rest of the P2P community will inspire Open
Governance, ensuring that everyone's interests can be met to the
greatest extent possible. Once I have a pretty good grasp of the
variety of open manufacturing techniques out there and see they all
have a developmental platform to stand on, ethical treatment and open
governance is next on my developmental radar.
I find this discussion group so very important. Those that came before
this group, in their variety of interests, have come together to
ensure this medium remains possible for us to have these discussions
at zero financial cost (unless you consider your time of financial
value). It is telling for what is to come...
I believe we will live in a world where lethal thoughts are scarce. I
believe this group, and the open production of the physical is
essential to bringing the open source community into everyday life,
outside cyberspace.
Nathan, within the community quarters aboard the spaceship squeals
with disappointment, "This fabricated strawberry cheesecake doesn't
taste as good as the one Josef makes! Who forgot the screwdriver?
Josef, would you make the group a strawberry cheesecake, please? Just
don't tell anyone you're making it for us, because everyone else on
board that wants strawberry cheesecake might use the threat of force
or use guns to take the cheesecake from us. I'd hate for Vinay to
shoot someone!"
So, as not to have 'the forgotten screwdriver issue', build a system
that can make virtually anything, ensure the system has checks, double
checks, and several thousand distributed verifications before
launching our little collective out into outer space.
Bryan Bishop
> Open Manufacturing and the rest of the P2P community will inspire
> Open Governance, ensuring that everyone's interests can be met to the
> greatest extent possible. Once I have a pretty good grasp of the
> variety of open manufacturing techniques out there and see they all
> have a developmental platform to stand on, ethical treatment and open
> governance is next on my developmental radar.
No, I think real p2p is super-empowered hopeful/collaborative
anarchists, it can't be p2p if it's peer-to-government or something.
Just be careful when tredding in those waters.
Nathan W. Cravens
> > Open Manufacturing and the rest of the P2P community will inspire
> > Open Governance, ensuring that everyone's interests can be met to the
> > greatest extent possible. Once I have a pretty good grasp of the
> > variety of open manufacturing techniques out there and see they all
> > have a developmental platform to stand on, ethical treatment and open
> > governance is next on my developmental radar.
>
> No, I think real p2p is super-empowered hopeful/collaborative
> anarchists, it can't be p2p if it's peer-to-government or something.
> Just be careful when tredding in those waters.
>
> - Bryan
discuss government/politics is a sensitive subject. The governments
that dominate the world today are figureheads of proprietary agency,
far from open. I understand the word "government" has stigma. It has
stigma particularly in the p2p community (points to self, if one
could) because government's current and most explicit feature is it's
role to secure a minority's proprietary based material interests of
those that belong within that government.
As P2P groups advance they will form a series of regulatory
mechanisms, but not to procure a few dominant minority interests;
namely, the rich and their hungry sociopathic attack dog, the
monopolistic corporation. The regulatory agent (like a software
program) will function to channel the most distribution of control to
the greatest extent for each minority interest, the peer group. I call
that Open Government.
In a post-capitalist society, assuming Strong AI isn't embedded in
software to allocate enough space and material resources to anticipate
social interests, there will be debate on how much space and resources
individuals can use and occupy until technologies we create make space
and material resources infinitely abundant. Even in a post-capitalist
environment, the forum in which debate and decision processes will
need to exist and be called something.
I hope I'm still not walking on coals here... if ever there where a
time I was.
Bryan Bishop
> mechanisms, but not to procure a few dominant minority interests;
> namely, the rich and their hungry sociopathic attack dog, the
> monopolistic corporation. The regulatory agent (like a software
> program) will function to channel the most distribution of control to
> the greatest extent for each minority interest, the peer group. I
> call that Open Government.
I still think this is a little off, Nathan. I see 'government' as an
operating system is to the computer .. you should never see it unless
you're updating infrastructure or somesuch. It shouldn't be about
making compromises between 'minority interests', whatever that means. I
don't think there should be distribution of 'control' at all. "Control
is an illusion, order our comforting lie: through chaos, from chaos,
into chaos we fly."
Maybe more progress could be made if we have a few rules:
1) You and your group can leave at any time.
2) Anybody that leaves is given the von Neumann probe seed to go start
their own culture/social-group thing. The trick is that you will have
to find resources from which to sustain yourselves. There's
no "control" on the frontiers, you see.
3) Internal disputes are resolved by whatever mechanisms are established
when you guys leave at any time. I.e., the configuration and parameters
of the new life/society/system you wish to build for yourself/others.
Remember, it's a culture of open manufacturing ... we have don't have to
cling to people that want to leave. And if they don't want to leave,
and are causing trouble, then use whatever default mechanisms to deal
with that within your "operating system". Don't like it? Go fork it.
Anything that adds to this is ideological cruft, no matter how much I
might agree with proposals and such. I am mainly interested on
this "core seed" that allows such development and growth.
> In a post-capitalist society, assuming Strong AI isn't embedded in
> software to allocate enough space and material resources to
> anticipate social interests, there will be debate on how much space
> and resources individuals can use and occupy until technologies we
> create make space and material resources infinitely abundant. Even in
> a post-capitalist environment, the forum in which debate and decision
> processes will need to exist and be called something.
Allocation assumes ownership. Error ...
Nathan Cravens
On Tuesday 16 September 2008, Nathan W. Cravens wrote:> As P2P groups advance they will form a series of regulatoryI still think this is a little off, Nathan. I see 'government' as an
> mechanisms, but not to procure a few dominant minority interests;
> namely, the rich and their hungry sociopathic attack dog, the
> monopolistic corporation. The regulatory agent (like a software
> program) will function to channel the most distribution of control to
> the greatest extent for each minority interest, the peer group. I
> call that Open Government.
operating system is to the computer .. you should never see it unless
you're updating infrastructure or somesuch. It shouldn't be about
making compromises between 'minority interests', whatever that means.
By minority interest in the context of P2P, I mean, everyone will be a minority interest. (Chris Anderson's 'Long Tail', for example) The idea behind my grand regulatory scheme is to attempt to harmonize minority interests (one peer mindset/group) with other minority interests (other peer mindsets/groups) that may be very different from another, yet with each group an ability to exist and cohabit simultaneously, given a resource remains scarce and shared between groups a form of regulation is nessisary or war between groups will ignite until the biggest stick wins.
I
don't think there should be distribution of 'control' at all. "Control
is an illusion, order our comforting lie: through chaos, from chaos,
into chaos we fly."
Maybe more progress could be made if we have a few rules:
1) You and your group can leave at any time.
2) Anybody that leaves is given the von Neumann probe seed to go start
their own culture/social-group thing. The trick is that you will have
to find resources from which to sustain yourselves. There's
no "control" on the frontiers, you see.
3) Internal disputes are resolved by whatever mechanisms are established
when you guys leave at any time. I.e., the configuration and parameters
of the new life/society/system you wish to build for yourself/others.
Remember, it's a culture of open manufacturing ... we have don't have to
cling to people that want to leave. And if they don't want to leave,
and are causing trouble, then use whatever default mechanisms to deal
with that within your "operating system". Don't like it? Go fork it.
Allocation assumes ownership. Error ...
> In a post-capitalist society, assuming Strong AI isn't embedded in
> software to allocate enough space and material resources to
> anticipate social interests, there will be debate on how much space
> and resources individuals can use and occupy until technologies we
> create make space and material resources infinitely abundant. Even in
> a post-capitalist environment, the forum in which debate and decision
> processes will need to exist and be called something.
Kevin Carson
> Þorsteinn: You should build it in Iceland instead.
> American: But what would Iceland be willing to do for us in return?
> Þorsteinn: Well, what is poland going to do?
> American: They're going to put train tracks right up to the factory.
>
This is pretty tangentially related, but that kind of naked angling
for corporate welfare is the reason pigs like that American should
thank God every night they go to bed with their heads still attached
to their bodies.
And BTW, the overwhelmingly central function of World Bank loans and
foreign aid over the past sixty years has been to "put train tracks
(or electrical utilities) right up to the factory."
Every time I hear one of those glorified tapeworms talking with a
straight face about "our free enterprise system," it makes me (only
half facetiously) wish for a Pol Pot to take out everyone who wears a
necktie to work.
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
Hear hear!
Well, I'm not as inclined, even facetiously, to summon a Pol Pot... I
don't like the idea of eradicating humans, but I'd sure like a
fool-proof method to eradicate stupidity.
As I hope everybody noticed, the cool thing about this isn't the
American idiot, but rather the process, which is cool and suave and I
want it in my cellar. The story was just funny and worth retelling, as a
prime example of how stupid centralization is.
- S
Kevin Carson wrote:
> On 9/15/08, Smári McCarthy <sp...@hi.is> wrote:
>
>> Þorsteinn: You should build it in Iceland instead.
>> American: But what would Iceland be willing to do for us in return?
>> Þorsteinn: Well, what is poland going to do?
>> American: They're going to put train tracks right up to the factory.
>>
>
> This is pretty tangentially related, but that kind of naked angling
> for corporate welfare is the reason pigs like that American should
> thank God every night they go to bed with their heads still attached
> to their bodies.
>
> And BTW, the overwhelmingly central function of World Bank loans and
> foreign aid over the past sixty years has been to "put train tracks
> (or electrical utilities) right up to the factory."
>
> Every time I hear one of those glorified tapeworms talking with a
> straight face about "our free enterprise system," it makes me (only
> half facetiously) wish for a Pol Pot to take out everyone who wears a
> necktie to work.
>
- --
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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Patrick Anderson
> >Nathan,
> >Are you interested in discussing property ownership arrangements for
> >'Manufacturing' as mundane as pure agriculture, or would you rather
> >limit the discussions to man-made products only?
>
> I'm open to discussing anything viable. That was a blanket answer to
> your question. I'd like to answer you more specifically, however.
> Would you rephrase the question, Patrick? I'd like to better
> understand what you're asking.
My interpretation of the phrase "Open Manufacturing" very specifically
includes attempting to determine how to make the material Capital
(what I sometimes call the Physical Sources) of that production as
'Open' as possible.
Within our current system, control has it's final rest in property
ownership. Owners rule. But in my opinion that can be OK if we can
just figure out what it is about ownership that is 'bad', for then we
can become owners through regular purchasing while applying a contract
written in the spirit of the GNU GPL that constrains product
distribution in the same manner.
Notice the GNU GPL is actually a Trade Agreement enforced by the
Copyright holders who chose to apply it. It only comes into force
during Trade = when the product is given or sold to another. The
primary requirement of the GNU GPL is that users (consumers) gain "at
cost" access to the Virtual Sources of that production (source code
that is).
The analogous contract, when willingly applied by some owners of
material Capital (the property owners of some Physical Sources of
production) would require any product user somehow gain "at cost"
access to those farms and factories.
The way I see that "at cost" access happening is through the contract
that would require all price above cost (profit) be treated as an
investment from the consumer who paid it - so as the community grew,
the distribution of source ownership would be automatic and self
balancing.
As a consumer gained sufficient ownership in the physical sources of
production (even if he does not have the skills to 'operate' those
sources), not only would he have complete control over all that he
consumes, he would also be receiving that product it "at cost" since,
being the owner of the sources, he would also be the owner of that
product even before it was produced.
Think of someone who owns an apple tree. He might pay somebody else
to tend the tree and harvest the fruit, and pay those wages as costs,
but he could not pay profit, for who would he pay it to?
Patrick
Bryan Bishop
> Within our current system, control has it's final rest in property
> ownership. Owners rule. But in my opinion that can be OK if we can
> just figure out what it is about ownership that is 'bad', for then we
> can become owners through regular purchasing while applying a
> contract written in the spirit of the GNU GPL that constrains product
> distribution in the same manner.
I don't like this idea. But, if you were going to have to use it, I
would recommend the only constraints you would hope to enforce are
those on growth rates, so that a community actually knows, to the best
of its ability, whether or not it's on the verge of material and
energetic collapse. You'd be smart to survey your resource repositories
first, have this in the 'commons' of the community, in the same sense
of the open and recursive commons, such that you understand how much
growth you can plan for. Then it's up to you to figure out how to make
sure people aren't stupid, perhaps through distributive licensing of
material contracts. Something like that. You could easily work this
into a computer simulation and see which information helps different
agents in a social network operate more effectively / less stupidly /
more innovatively / more effortlessly.
Eric Hunting
just like the Soft technologies, small scale renewable energy
technologies, and other 'green' technologies people tend to assume are
'good' by default, open manufacturing technology will be a two-edged
sword with potential for abuse. Most so-called 'green' and
'sustainable' housing in fact isn't because, no matter how low impact
the materials you make your house out of or how many solar panels you
put on it, if you sacrificed virgin land to build it in a place that
makes you drive long distances for your basic needs you've destroyed
all environmental virtue of the design. Sustainability is only
possible in an urban density community context. Most green housing is,
in fact, luxury housing built on the edge of wilderness. It's a
failure. Resistance by the established corporate and political
hegemonies forced the development of these green technologies to
pursue a 'grass roots' approach, selling themselves on their potential
for personal independence. But with that came the ability for people
to comfortably live and build homes in places they simply should not.
In later life Buckminster Fuller concluded that his life-long failure
to realize the ideal of the Dymaxian House was a stroke of luck as his
success could have suburbanized the whole planet, devastating its
environment. Thus he spent his last years of life designing and
advocating arcologies. Open manufacturing technology has this same
kind inherent hazard, thus my preference for advocating it in the
context of community. In a community context we can accelerate the
pace of this technology advance and also moderate its hazards.
We face two jobs here. Not only must we overcome the hegemonies of the
Industrial Age, we must overcome the cultural sociopathy it infected
society with that threatens to both stall the advance of these
technologies and turns these new means to independence into a threat
to the environment. We need to cultivate these technologies with an
eye toward minimizing their direct impact through recycling, reuse,
and upcycling and we need to cultivate a new urbanism in concert with
this, new reasons to live together and new ways to make that an
improvement in quality of life, not a detraction from it.
In some ways, it's a good thing that we don't have a ubiquitous
comprehensive nanotechnology at-hand right now because, given our
current cultural patterns, we probably would quickly destroy the world
with it before our cultural values caught up to the technology.
Eric Hunting
erich...@gmail.com
On Sep 14, 2008, at 12:56 AM, Helen Titchen Beeth wrote:
> Bryan, you said "most land is "owned" at the moment, meaning people
> with
>> guns will get angry at you for trying to do anything new. This is
>> why I
>> suspect space is our opportunity to get a few things right coming
>> up.]"
>
> Guns aren't what define people - consciousness is. Consciousness
> (which also makes culture) determines who owns guns and why. The
> people with the guns won't be around forever, and people have been
> known to get rid of their guns - even to give away their land and
> their fortunes.
>
> What concerns me more is that with global consciousness as it is now
> (in acquisitive mode in most places on the planet), if open
> manufacturing, 3-d printing and the like were to really succeed, we
> wouldn't need rockets and NASA technology to get us into space - we'd
> find ourselves there on the piles of stuff we manufacture!
>
> How do you all see this question, my friends? In the delicate
> environmental situation in which we find ourselves today, what will it
> take for us to be wise about what we manufacture and in which
> quantities?
>
> :-)
>
> h
Nathan Cravens
My interpretation of the phrase "Open Manufacturing" very specifically
includes attempting to determine how to make the material Capital
(what I sometimes call the Physical Sources) of that production as
'Open' as possible.
Within our current system, control has it's final rest in property
ownership. Owners rule. But in my opinion that can be OK if we can
just figure out what it is about ownership that is 'bad', for then we
can become owners through regular purchasing while applying a contract
written in the spirit of the GNU GPL that constrains product
distribution in the same manner.
Notice the GNU GPL is actually a Trade Agreement enforced by the
Copyright holders who chose to apply it. It only comes into force
during Trade = when the product is given or sold to another. The
primary requirement of the GNU GPL is that users (consumers) gain "at
cost" access to the Virtual Sources of that production (source code
that is).
The analogous contract, when willingly applied by some owners of
material Capital (the property owners of some Physical Sources of
production) would require any product user somehow gain "at cost"
access to those farms and factories.
The way I see that "at cost" access happening is through the contract
that would require all price above cost (profit) be treated as an
investment from the consumer who paid it - so as the community grew,
the distribution of source ownership would be automatic and self
balancing.
As a consumer gained sufficient ownership in the physical sources of
production (even if he does not have the skills to 'operate' those
sources), not only would he have complete control over all that he
consumes, he would also be receiving that product it "at cost" since,
being the owner of the sources, he would also be the owner of that
product even before it was produced.
Think of someone who owns an apple tree. He might pay somebody else
to tend the tree and harvest the fruit, and pay those wages as costs,
but he could not pay profit, for who would he pay it to?
I don't agree that we must find a reason to live together. I'd like to have my personal space and eat my community cake too. Open Manufacturing will provide the physical base to live in a world we'd all like to live in, not necessarily 'together', whether as an avid communitarian or a secluded hermit or otherwise.
Eric Hunting
used to draw Captain Iceland and the Cartoon History of Iceland, until
he ended up working security at the Penis Mall (yes, that's what the
locals call it), got sick of working at a tape factory, and then moved
to Arizona for the great privilege of perpetual indignity from state
and TSA/INS bureaucrat/thugs. I once considered moving there for the
prospect of a low pollution environment, big blue hot springs, and
working on energy packaging technology -it will be one of the Saudi
Arabias of the Hydrogen Age, if we ever get to it. But I don't think I
could ever handle the winters (without a geothermally heated geodesic
dome to live in) let alone the Brenevin... It does have probably the
single-most beautiful national anthem of any country, but being a
Modernist, I still think Nauru has the coolest flag. I heard recently
that they are planning the first elf-friendly opera house in Reykjavik.
Eric Hunting
erich...@gmail.com
Vinay Gupta
Climate's about the same as New York City in winter, not that bad.
As for the rest, all true, all true!!!
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
http://hexayurt.com/plan - the whole systems, big picture vision
Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk : hexayurt
Icelandic Cell : (+354) 869-4605
"If it doesn't fit, force it."
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
Pollution isn't as low as many would expect, but yet not bad. In
Vestmannaeyjar the air is frequently tainted with a tang of salt (to be
expected, sea everywhere; yesterday there were actually flakes of salt
blowing all over the place), the smell of burning fish (from the two
fishmeal plants) and of burning garbage (from the town incinerator). In
Reykjavík it's very varying depending on where in the city you are. The
worst air in the city is typically at Grensás, which is close to where
my apartment there is. Measurements from there are available at
http://loft.ust.is/loftgaedi/
Hot springs aren't always blue. Frequently green or yellow and other
colors. There's an artificial red one on this island but it doesn't have
a lot of water and most people don't notice it.
Brennivín is awesome. The anthem is not. The 23rd article of our
constitution provides for freedom of belief for Icelanders, but our flag
has a big cross on it and our anthem starts with "Oh Lord of our
country, oh country of our Lord, we worship thine holy, holy name." I
will admit the tune is nice though.
The opera house being elf friendly sounds like something out of a tour
guide, but sure enough it's being built.
- Smári
Smári McCarthy
sm...@yaxic.org http://smari.yaxic.org
(+354) 662 2701 - "Technology is about people"
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ben lipkowitz
> The point here being that you should be able to make this stuff anywhere
> were you have basalt, which excludes places like Hawaii but includes
> most of the planet, not to mention the moon. So, homework for the
> willing: Figure out a way to make basalt fiber on a small scale.
> I've got lots of data coming over the wires about this; will share on
> request.
any results on this? i've got a paper about lunar glass here that's mildly
on-topic (page 25 or search for "lunar glass"):
http://fenn.freeshell.org/lunar3.pdf
but i'm more interested in earthly processes atm