Anyway, I feel Bryan is right in wanting to separate out some issues. Here
are six broad areas of exploration I see right now that have been discussed
on this list:

* The world how it was historically (like what has been tried and thought
about, all the "-ologies" and "-isms", and also how they would relate to
open manufacturing and related ideals, as in, how does open manufacturing
affirm or invalidate the principles of, say, "the iron law of wages" or
"hunter/gatherer ideals" or the almost half-century old "Triple Revolution"
document.)

* The world as it is right now, and how it might be patched up (with open
manufacturing or the open enterprise or other alternatives like a new
currency to redirect the flow of manufacturing, for example, can Iceland be
saved with open manufacturing under the current dominant economic system? Or
could an Icelandic electric-Krona help it right now?)

* The world in transition to a post-scarcity future (and how open
manufacturing relates to that, as well as other proposals like, how can a
slowly expanding open source movement bring abundance to more and more
people? Or, can a different sort of currency bring about a better future
with manufacturing happening in a more open and sustainable way, like an
electric-based dollar, or a basic income guarantee, and so on). There is
some overlap here with the previous topic of patching up the world -- I'm
not combining them though because there may be people who do believe in open
manufacturing but don't believe in the possibility or desirability of a
post-scarcity future moving beyond conventional economics.

* The world as a fully post-scarcity society in the future and how it would
work (once we got there, like, how what are the implications of every home
having a 3D printer or similar system at the neighborhood level, such as
what it means to be able to print toys, or print agricultural robots to grow
our food, or print solar panels to collect power, or print diamandoid
materials to build our spacecraft, or print machines to make more 3D printer
toner from air, water, rock, and print shredders that can recycle no longer
needed printed objects back into 3D printer toner). A lot of this entails
speculation, and relates to a lot of sci-fi, from authors like Vinge, Banks,
Hogan, Brain, and so on.

* The world approaching "The Singularity" or a series of singularity-like
transitions, and a how open manufacturing values and approaches may interact
with a singularity. Again, there is overlap here with the post-scarcity
world idea, but there are people who may believe in one but not the other,
and some who believe in both, and some who believe in neither.

* Interwoven with all those societal discussions are the specific technical
artifacts we might be talking about and the process of actually designing
them in detail. But this interconnection would be more obvious if we had
some critical mass of manufacturing designs and metadata encoded in common
open formats and usable for analysis and simulation to explore all these
areas (historic, current, transitional, post-scarcity, singularity).
If there is an argument for a "openmanufacturing-dev" list like Bryan made,
that might be a clearer boundary -- the focus on making such a system (or
systems, SKDB, OSCOMAK, fenn's Gingery-related work, open biotech, and so
on, maybe in partnership with others, or using existing platforms and
standards) so it may be used to inform general discussion here, like support
detailed simulations of alternative economics and sustainability. Though
even then, should discussions of simulations be on which list? Or building
simulations is discussed on that one, and running simulations is discussed
on this one? But one could possibly work that out down the road.

All of these are overlapping, yet distinct, areas of discussion. But
discussions can quickly go from one area to another. So, amplifying on
Bryan's theme, we can wonder how open manufacturing relates to each of these
areas, and also ask how this list itself or "open manufacturing" is
presented to the public in this context. Are we emphasizing one of these six
areas? Or all? I feel all six areas have been fair game, and that's why I
feel Bryan is right to focus on the more general statement for the list;
also, it is not clear what solutions will emerge from discussions, so I feel
it is premature for the group as a whole to endorse one approach (beyond the
virtue of open manufacturing using open source methods, which ties all these
things together). Still, the clearer we have all this in mind, maybe the
stronger the argument can be for a separate dev list like Bryan started?

I started a mailing list related to the simulation of enterprises from a
chaordic perspective in 2002, but did not push that forward for various
reasons: (please don't sign up for it now, the link is just included to look
at the archives where I posted some links and comments).
   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/simulchaord-discuss/
Here is a slashdot article on "Simulating Societies" which was a key citation:
   http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/11/0030236
And here is the Atlantic article it relates to:
   http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200204/rauch
Anyway, simulation is one way to bridge this gap from general informed talk
to at least some notion of scientific exploration and repeatable experiment.
(Maybe we're all part of someone else's simulation of such issues. :-)
For me, when we are using an open manufacturing database to do detailed
simulation of a society (or even just in a game :-), I will feel we have
made a huge step forward. You can see a very crude paper prototype of such a
system here:
   http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/prototype.htm

But with that said, I'm talked out for the moment myself :-) and I'm
starting to feel like fenn and wanting to get back to development, focusing
mostly on the sixth area, with content related to the third area of
transition, through making more free and open source software and related
manufacturing content. :-) That isn't meant to say talking about other areas
is not worthwhile, I'm just saying how I feel myself right now. I tend to go
in these kind of cycles, talk for some weeks, program for some weeks, get
distracted for some weeks, then repeat the cycle in some permutation. :-)

--Paul Fernhout