uh, hate to beat the same dead horse again (well thats a lie - I
actually enjoy it!) has anyone looked at cubespawn lately?
bunch of standard frames with different drop in modules... standard
power connection, standard data connections - no limitations on
flexible designs within the framework, inherent modularity, inherent
interoperability... yadda yadda yadda http://www.cubespawn.com
in the blind hope that someone uses it, but just selling it to the
official folks as better than what's available. Then it pops out in
the next version, users in the market can go to ebay and buy "Prusa
3.2" parts to know what they're getting, and everyone is happy.
Andy
My point was that the existing rock stars need to see their role not
just as creative but integrative. It's important to make great stuff,
but it's equally important to use your role to promote (or demote) the
stuff other people are making. This is the role played by the people
at the top of the kernel community, for example: Linus and Greg and
Alan and co. review far more code than they write these days, and the
world is better for it.
See: "No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"Alfie Kohn, ... argues that competition is essentially detrimental to
every important aspect of human experience; our relationships,
self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be
improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless
competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is
anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the
primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves
assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will
be an invaluable resource. ...
One place where competition cannot exist, according to Kohn, is
within oneself. Such striving to better one's own standing is an
individual, not interactive matter; it does not involve MEGA. Of course
some people cannot imagine pushing themselves without the possibility of
'winning' or the threat of 'losing', but this by no means implies that
all motivation is dependent upon competitive frameworks. Throughout
history countless large and small accomplishments have been achieved
simply out of an individual's desire to do better without any thought of
beating others. Such striving for mastery cannot be confused with
competition. ..."
However, I feel it is a good idea along the lines of what you suggest to
have detailed reporting on what different systems can do so people can
decide what suite of features best fits their particular needs, where
one could have perhaps some common table of data for comparison.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies
of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
However, I feel it is a good idea along the lines of what you suggest to have detailed reporting on what different systems can do so people can decide what suite of features best fits their particular needs, where one could have perhaps some common table of data for comparison.
I'm not completely sure I follow either what you or dumpa are really
talking about, but if you look at the natural world, there is a vast
amount of diversity for different niches. Even if certain basic forms
tend to become dominant after a period of broad experiments, although
even then you can not easily see in the fossil record genetic
co-evolution at the level of enzymes and cellular structure. Every
particular combination of capacity has its strengths and weaknesses in
different situations (different niches). That's one reason we see so
much variety in the world.
Anyway, what one person does working on one project or a small number of
related ones is not the same as what an open source community does with
everyone with their own interests and own different resources. For
example, for someone who has a lot of threaded rod lying around, they
are going to be interested in different designs than someone who has a
lot of wood lying around. Someone who wants to print food is going to
have different interests than someone who wants to cut metal, and so on.
==
By the way, I just moved the server that openmanufacturing.net is on for
reasons mentioned on the OpenVirgle list, but hopefully no one will
notice any issues with that.
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/browse_thread/thread/9aefdb53376a1ffb#
I still really like that graphic you put together there.
Marcus-
I understand your frustration, only way too well. :-) Examples:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
For example, Bryan and fenn could have helped me make OSCOMAK really
work well, but instead both were focused on SKDB. Still, I could have
helped Bryan and fenn a lot with SKDB, but what did I do, although I did
encourage Bryan to keep working on it as friendly "coopetition". So,
just a typical example of the kind of thing that happening. And in the
end, the two are different concepts anyway, SKDB being more about
production (apt-get), but OSCOMAK being more about analysis (to the
extent it does anything, which it really doesn't). I can point to, even
three years ago, a dozen projects similar to OSCOMAK as far as being
about open manufacturing in some realm with a list I put here (a bit
messy looking now as a page served statically but not in media wiki):
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Main_Page
But, we also all have our limits. First off, anything done by people at
a university is limited by the fact that university people have all
sorts of obligations related to students and committees and so on
(beyond family). It's hard to do basic research things on your own,
whether you are an independent or at a university, because you are then
stressed out about money etc., and more and more research in academia is
driven based around short-term money issues.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
What's amazing about RepRap, and Fab@Home, and FabLab, and so on, is
really that it is happening at all, not that it is not happening better. :-)
I was very disappointed in the Squeak core team a decade ago for similar
reason, where they cared more about their one vision of Squeak and did
not work to integrate community work, and project after project suffered
from bit rot, and core issues never got fixed, and so on. But in that
case, the issue was disagree with them about focus -- I was interested
in managing complexity but they were interested in showing really cool
stuff on a GUI. I might have tried to fix that, but the Squeak license
was broken, too, and people would not acknowledge that. About a decade
later, people were finally focusing on fixing the license and making it
more modular and so on, but social momentum had moved on (Java,
JavaScript, the Web, tons of other things).
What you are talking about all sounds sensible -- if you had a billion
dollars and could hire people so you or someone else could tell them to
do what you want or else they will be fired. But that seems to be the
kind of world we are trying to build beyond? :-) Related:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Open source just does not work the same way socially, with open projects
based around mostly volunteers or loose alliances of consultants or
companies with various motives being more like "herding cats". So, for
good or bad, one has to accept that projects will have a different
social dynamic, as frustrating as that can be.
Yes, there is a terrible amount of waste from a centralized point of
view. On the other hand, there is a large amount of search and
experiment and learning, and that is good. Eventually, projects that are
openly licensed can build on each other. And with an Open Source
approach, no central organization has to come up with a big chunk of
money to explore something, which is a big issue when what you are doing
is trying to create alternatives to centralization and big centralized
organizations are not too keen on funding that. :-)
A book on some of that:
"Producing Open Source Software"
http://producingoss.com/en/index.html
Still, it is clear that, yes, even within open source, leadership and
clear direction can make a difference. You're right to be frustrated
about that. So, despite what I said about a billion dollars, yes, for
charismatic or well-organized leaders, yes maybe they can accomplish
somewhat more on somewhat less, as far as getting a community to focus
on something. It's good when they can, but it's not easy, and also, what
happens when the charismatic well-organized leadership is wrong?
Research, especially basic research, can be fraught with dead ends,
stops and starts, things that sounded good but did not work out for
various reasons, or things someone thought was a dead end (cold fusion?)
but really worked, and so on.
For example, is this eCat cold fusion device by Rossi and Focardi for
real or was it a waste of time following up a dead end?
http://pesn.com/2011/05/07/9501828_Seven_Reasons_To_Embrace_Rossis_E-Cat/
But I'd suggest even that "Producing OSS" book may be a bit dated,
because it focuses more on the project idea, like running some project
at SourceForge or Google Code, and is advice to someone who wants to be
a project leader (good advice, but still from that perspective).
GitHub is maybe the best current big example of how evolution (via
stigmergic cooperation) is all working socially as far as herding cats.
Github is working because it allows people to easily fork code, and then
send pull request related to changes. No one need to get approval as a
"committer" before they can start hacking away on code. It's a new
social model in that sense. There are still gatekeepers in a social
sense, like the people who care most about a project (like they started
it) and publicize their repository a lot, but overall, the entire social
feel is very different.
Some links on a general theory of stigmergic collaboration that GitHub
really represents:
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/03-elliott.php
http://p2pfoundation.net/Stigmergy
http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Stigmergic_collaboration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy
http://stigmergiccollaboration.blogspot.com/
http://www.stigmergicsystems.com/
Socially, a group that relates to that, started by Dee Hock:
http://www.chaordic.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaordic
In the end, evolution, stigmergy, and chaordic processes are maybe all
intertwined as ideas?
As is said here:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Admin
"RepRap as a technology is designed and developed as a set of careful
decisions by all of us, in an open developers mailing list (yay!).
It is also the result of "drive-by uploads" by dark-horse
maverick-iconoclasts which completely blow away our existing road map.
(If you have an idea for how to make RepRap better, please join our open
developers mailing list since you're a developer.)
Often, your ideas are better than anything we could come up with.
Which is why we've developed, adopted, support, and indeed, often
document a number of different softwares, electronics, firmwares,
positioning systems, and even fabrication methods (extrusion, laser
cutting, etc.) Call it "perverse polymorphism".
And none of this has anything to do with Administration.
Administration is not design, it is not development. Development is done
by developers, by you. In an open developers mailing list.
We would be honored if you join us."
Still, one can also think about using a billion dollars differently than
telling people what to do. One can set up a themed research lab and set
people loose who are interested in the theme. Willow Garage maybe has
aspects of that? But ultimately a basic income might lead to more of
that... And maybe we'll get a basic income when RepRap (or something
similar) finally is working well, after we don't need it so much. :-) As
is said in that RSA Animate youtube video on motivation, in our society,
it is important to take money off the table, by ensuring people have
enough money so it is not an issue, but then having an environment that
lets people focus on things like transcendent purpose, increasing
mastery, and a lot of self-direction.
It's not exactly the same, but MakerBot Industries built on RepRap ideas
and has a simplified system that is (supposedly) easier to put together
reliably, and they have related documentation etc..
http://wiki.makerbot.com/thingomatic-doc:thingomatic-assembly-instructions
But I guess it is a bit more expensive in some sense (but how much,
really?). And all their plans are free if you want to DIY. So, that is
an example of what some might call fragmentation and others might call
innovation.
So, you might want to compare and contrast the RepRap vs. Thing-O-Matic
approaches and documentation, and think about what all that means -- I'm
not sure what it means, I'm just suggesting to think about it. :-)
Yes, the Thing-O-Matic is not focused on self-replication, but it can
still do a lot in that direction, and the reality is that RepRap can't
replicate electronics yet, anyway. The value of being able to experiment
with making your own stuff can be very high even if you don't have a
true self-replicating system (for which I recommend gardening now that
Spring is here in the Northern Hemisphere. :-)
(I still have my Thing-O-Matic in the box as I've been working on other
hopefully-paying-eventually stuff and enjoying the insect-free weather
the past couple of weeks; but with the biting insects showing up, it
might be time to get it out and put it together to do more indoors stuff.)