[Open Manufacturing] Fwd: Global Village Construction Set Recursion

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Nathan Cravens <knu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ponderousness aside, this brings up a discussion between Marcin Jakubowski
> and I that largely relates to this conversation. Let's introduce what I call
> "efficiency through recursion." The test subject for this model is: Open
> Source Ecology: Global Village Construction Set: Compressed Earth Block
> Press: melting and casting from scrap metal vs purchasing caste parts. This
> process can be called a form of "productive recursion," an open source form
> of production from the bottom-up, produced more efficiently to generate more
> value than top down proprietary methods. The "efficiency through recursion"
> theory assumes a 5:1 ratio of value generated to labor used in the
> theoretical case presented. This may mean more labor time to produce an
> artifact than purchasing assembled materials elsewhere, yet the financial
> cost (waste) saved means less toil or wage labor in the long run to generate
> the same item: therefore: a recursive acceleration in production efficiency.
> In theory, this will mean more leisure time as a result when proven in
> practice: for one that chooses to construct the item oneself at a community
> generated Fab Lab or when purchasing the same item from an agent that
> applied similar methods of production. This means the time to manufacture a
> product through community supported manufacturing or personal fabrication,
> whichever is most efficient, will receive highly significant productive
> increases, and when proven by results, will become adopted. This theory can
> be proven many times over when communities can easily acquire the knowledge
> and materials to assemble the meta-tools or Open Source Fab Lab to generate
> productive tools that reduce toil and increase leisure. Inspired by our
> e-mail conversation and my stay at Factor e Farm, Marcin developed a working
> formula to test the theory of "efficiency through recursion" here:
> http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Recursion