Community's Thoughts on Progress and Its Quantification

[Heath Matlock]

Maybe I'm not asking the appropriate questions, be my guest to correct me.

What amount of change in the political and social landscape can be expected if Factor-e-Farm or a similar group receives $500,000 USD? What about $1,000,000 USD?

Can we quantify in some form of currency what the tipping point is.

What is the tipping point exactly?


--
Heath Matlock
+1 256 274 4225

[Michel Bauwens]

A great question,

I hope Marcin can answer this,

Michel

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[Marcin Jakubowski]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Heath Matlock <heathm...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe I'm not asking the appropriate questions, be my guest to correct me.

What amount of change in the political and social landscape can be expected if Factor-e-Farm or a similar group receives $500,000 USD? What about $1,000,000 USD?

All I can say is that this amount of cash would lead to opensourcing most of

http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Humanity_Plus_Presentation#Slide_6

If converted to open business models and if they are adopted virally for local agriculture, renewable energy, and other fabrication, the market for products created would be conservatively 1% of the world economy, or about $1T.

Marcin

Can we quantify in some form of currency what the tipping point is.

What is the tipping point exactly?


--
Heath Matlock
+1 256 274 4225

--
--------------------------------------------------
Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.
Open Source Ecology
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog
http://www.replab.org
opensourceecology at gmail dot com
Skype: marcin_ose
--------------------------------------------------

Nobody said that building the world's first open source village would be easy.

-- Anonymous, 2009

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-- Robert A. Heinlein

NOTICE: All discussion in this communication is in the public domain, unless otherwise noted. If you are sharing proprietary, confidential, or otherwise privileged information, you must make that explicit. Otherwise, this discussion may be copied, republished, and otherwise used in the public domain - respectfully and with proper attribution. Furthermore, please consider that we are not interested in discussion as much as action. Therefore, we are particularly interested in discussion of ideas that both parties can commit to by acting on them.

[Paul D. Fernhout]

I think there are a lot of great projects that would benefit from funds to
give people time to work on them and also funds for hardware -- but it is
also hard to pick any one. Ideally a "basic income" across the country would
let individuals make their own decisions, rather than just having one group
doling out scarce resources through some kind of priority system. But, we're
probably still some time away from that. But, there is hope someday even all
the millionaires in the US Congress will see how they would be better off
with a basic income; maybe some will read this someday: :-)
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html

If you look at Wikipedia as an example, from what I recall, it took about
two million US dollars spent over a couple of years to build enough content
so it had a critical mass that people kept adding to on their own.
(Wikipedia was originally intended as a business to sell advertising and
related things.) So, I would think that much money given to a group like
Appropedia or a similar organization might make a huge difference to help
that reach critical mass as a non-profit:
http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia
And of course there is SKDB, too. And there is also the for-profit Maker
community. And the US government NIST is working on "SLIM".
"Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing"
http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
And there are several other related projects.

We've discussed the issue of standards before, but it seems like developing
some good standard for encoding information about manufacturing recipes and
how they relate to each other would be very important. Appropedia does not
do that to my knowledge (even as it has a large community as a wiki), SKDB
starts to do that (although it is not as accessible to most people as
Appropedia). I did some toe-dipping with OSCOMAK on that in various ways, on
the idea of interlinked manufacturing recipes.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/prototype.htm

Another route is to do political lobbying of some sort or engage in some
other social awareness campaign. Like the open manufacturing equivalent of this:
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
I've tried that in various ways with may writings, as have many others.

Another route is to focus on the simulation or virtual reality aspects of
manufacturing (both to create awareness and to encourage the creation of
freely licensed 3D model in some standard form). Our Garden Simulation was a
step towards that over a decade ago (you are essentially making simulated
botanical plants and harvested items). Fantastic Contraption is a 2D
mechanical example, with a design tool, challenges, a community, and a library.
http://fantasticcontraption.com/

Another routes is to focus on the design tool side -- to creates software
that helps people make lots of open designs (including things that have an
evolutionary breeding component like our PlantStudio software),
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/
linked into some sort of larger system (whether a social semantic desktop or
SKDB or Appropedia, NIST's SLIM, or whatever).

So, to recap, there are a few paths to go down, ideally in parallel:
* fund a specific hardware project like Factor-e-farm, CubeSpawn, RepRap or
whatever, hoping to push it along specifically (or maybe several);
* fund a specific simulation project like Second Life or some massive
multi-player game that connects to open manufacturing, where people are
creating 3D models that work in that world (or maybe several);
* fund new software tools that make open design easier for everyone;
* fund some sort of integration service, seen socially as the Wikipedia of
open manufacturing, whatever that would look like whether it had a wiki
aspect or not, like, Appropedia, SKDB, NIST's SLIM, my attempts at
OSCOMAK/PointrelSemanticDesktop, or whatever, which defined a standard way
to encode manufacturing recipes and licenses so everything interlinked and
could be analyzed and visualized somehow (like to tease out the minimal
self-replicating system that met some criterion);
* fund political lobbying, social awareness, the development of youtube
videos, presentations to foundations, campaigns to get universities to adopt
open manufacturing as part of their curriculum, or whatever to change social
consciousness and start more money (billions of dollars) flowing to this
field. One example my proposal to get the US to build 21,000 flexible
manufacturing facilities across the USA -- not that a couple million could
build those, but a couple million spent on lobbying or social awareness or
coordinating a grassroots campaign might free up more funds for building them:
"[Open Manufacturing] Re: Comments on manufacturing as the next big hobby"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/07204d7025a50265?hl=en

In dribs and drabs I've been trying to do all of these things over the
years, and not doing any of them very well. :-)

Maybe there are other broad categories I left out?

It's hard to pick just one category of effort because they are all important
in their own way. And each one generally appeals to different people (and
different funders) and requires different abilities. But, sure, throw a
couple million US$ at each of them over a year or two :-) and I think there
would be a lot of progress, especially if all those different efforts
cooperated somehow. I think the tipping point would be when see all those
things happening together -- so, people might be using better software tools
to design and breed contraptions in some standard representation that work
in both reality and a 3D virtual world, and this is generating enough media
to persuade some governments and foundations to pour a lot more resources
into all this. So, I'd say, maybe US$20 million to US$50 million to reach
that tipping point in a couple of years.

And then you could ask how to choose projects and that is a hard thing.
Really, it is better to fund committed people, or even better, to fund
committed communities somehow. But there is this caution:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy?page=0%2C1
"""
The love of money is the root of all evil
Injecting money into a development or innovation process carelessly can be
amazingly destructive, much as U.S. President Eisenhower, in his closing
address to the American people, warned:
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been
overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing
fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the
fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a
revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs
involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for
intellectual curiosity."
So, it shouldn�t really come as a shock that attempts to introduce money to
free-licensed development have not been more successful.
"""

So, I think an operating foundation is a better idea than grants or prizes.
There are lots of models one could look at with people who have been doing
sustainability research for decades. The Rodale Institute is one example.
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/
"""
Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that creates global solutions from
the ground up. Our soil scientists and a cooperating network of researchers
have documented that organic farming techniques offer the best solution to
global warming and famine. We were founded in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, in
1947 by organic pioneer J.I. Rodale. Our Farming Systems Trial�, the
longest-running U.S. study comparing organic and conventional farming
techniques, is the basis for our practical training to thousands of farmers
in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Our findings are clear: A global organic
transformation will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere and
restore soil fertility. Our mission: We improve the health and well-being
of people and the planet.
"""

They were funded mostly by a magazine. One might imagine the Make Magazine
having a physical embodiment like the Rodale Institute. Or, some existing
physical project like Factor-e-farm expanding. My own thoughts on that from
two decades ago:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html

One could also start from a "work college" and integrate this into the
curriculum:
http://www.workcolleges.org/

Or one might try to put together an international consortium to address the
problems of countries like Iceland or Greece:
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international
consortium"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/6336f30458de0648/e009aac004f3ad9d

But I'd further caution that one needs some sort of vision of an abundant
future for all to go with this based on humane (or transhumane?) values, and
one would need some sort of trans-economic framework to go with this whole
effort (more than, let's build a lot of really neat stuff and watch society
shudder to digest it). A "Star Trek" society is one possible vision, and a
larger framework been outlined at the moment on Wikipedia, building on the
ideas of Marshall Brain and others (mostly my writing there):
"Jobless Recovery"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jobless_recovery&oldid=332010752

So, I think we'd need to throw in a little more money for alternative
economic analysis. :-) So, let's round up to US$100 million for a three year
project run by an operating foundation or non-profit to get past some
tipping point to creating global physical abundance. :-)

US$100 million is about how much money the USA spends on war every eight
hours or so fighting over scarcity:
http://costofwar.com/

Now, how can we get people to see the irony of that? Well, that is a bit of
a chicken-and-egg thing, since getting people to see that irony is implicit
in one of the points above on social awareness. :-)

A flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next 25 years:
"Is Open Source the Answer To Giving?"
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223

And TV watching is consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year just in the USA:
"Mining the Cognitive Surplus"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258

So, there is plenty of time and money for this project, once it gets going.
But getting past that tipping point is the hard part. Bit by bit we are
getting there anyway. I think there has been enormous amounts of progress in
all directions, some captured on this list, but a vast amount beyond it too.
I'd expect that within the next decade we will as a global society probably
get past that tipping point by just bumbling around collectively, especially
as computers get faster and cheaper and all the individual contributions add
up. But, it sure would be nice to get to good results faster, given that
every year there are all sorts of risks like nuclear war or continued
economic collapse or plagues or energy disruptions, or whatever. But the
best reason to do it sooner is just to give everyone an abundant life
sooner. Or because some few people want to have some fun working in this
area. :-)

So it is IHMO about eight hours worth of the US war effort to get to the
tipping point of abundance for all. Now you know why there has to be
perpetual war, right? This estimate shows that there is so much abundance
around, if we did not burn it up continually, our pyramidal society would
change, and some people don't like that idea, as it is against their
economic religion, which is based on scarcity mythology:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
So, from that point of view, we need perpetual war, endless schooling,
excessive bureaucracy, vast prisons, and above all, boundless competition to
waste enough resources every day to make the abundant facts fit the
scarcity-based economic model. And I'd suggest, even with all that, the
abundant facts are becoming clearer every day. And someday soon, the
scarcity ideology is going to crack in a big way. (Either that, or we'll get
bioengineered plagues and high-tech mushroom clouds as a last ditch effort
by the elite to uses the tools of abundance to make reality fit
scarcity-based economic theology.)

So, overall, the biggest tipping point is when enough people are working
together from an abundance perspective. In that sense, we've probably
already passed that tipping point taking together Wikipedia, Debian
GNU/Linux, usenet, mailing lists, online forums, blogs, and the rest of the
web itself. So, transferring that enlightenment to the physical
manufacturing scene is the big challenge. If I had to pick just one project,
maybe a 3D virtual reality system about manufacturing (essentially,
Fantastic Contraption crossed with some 3D physics engine beyond what we
have now) might be most compelling in some ways, as an easy-to-walk-over
bridge between an enlightened freely sharing online community and the
physical world. Little Big Planet is something like this. I imagine one
could even fund this somehow as a computer game or online service (though it
would be unfortunate if it were proprietary).

Again, though, I think all the aspects of this are important, done in a way
to further humane (or trashumane and trans-ecological values) within a
trans-economic framework; ideally with government, foundations, and wealthy
individuals stepping forward to make it easier for the rest of us to do all
this in an open and free way.

But it will happen anyway from stigmergic cooperation even without big
chunks of money; it's just a matter of time (and needless suffering) until
we get past the physical tipping point from the accretion of small efforts.
We may well even be past it already with RepRap and so on. Maybe it might be
better to say there is a series of tipping points like dominoes? RepRap
might lead to improvements at Factor-e-Farm which might lead to improvements
in SKDB which might lead to improvements at Rodale which might lead to
improvements at Berea College (a work college) which might get picked up by
a university in Iceland creating a 3D online world which might inspire a
Greek university to try something new that spreads to all of Athens and then
the government of Finland might start rethinking its economy and have a
basic income and then Brazil might expand what it is doing already in many
areas, and then we might get a pan-African abundance movement gift-economy
linked up with Cuba and other Caribbean countries, and then the Pacific Rim
might shift over to an abundance ideology led by Singapore, then South
Korea, Japan, and finally China might shift over, and so on. With the USA
probably the last hold out in a final touch-and-go confrontation that will
make the Cuban Missile crisis look like a non-issue by comparison. James P.
Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear paints such a domino effect within a tiny
society, and talks about a "phase change" in society, brought about by a
sort of overall rising social temperature from high technology.

Basically, we need to build a 21st century society, which means moving
beyond a 20h century proprietary information model of research linked to a
19th century model of schooling. Something else I wrote on that:
http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/12/making-govt-work-a-huge-step.html#comments
I don't see this tipping point, or tipping points, in regard to open
manufacturing happening in isolation from broader social change involving
education, taxation, research, and so on.

Maybe another way to look at it is "weak points"? Open manufacturing is
based on abundance ideology, to my mind. What is the weakest point in
scarcity ideology? You could figure that out and push hard on it. For
example, scarcity ideology has a tougher time being believable the more
abundance people have around them. So, anything to create lots of abundance
in some area would help with that. We have a lot of textual content on the
web. How could we have even more music? More cartoons? More 3D designs? More
people with access to educational computers (like turning old cell phones
into handheld teaching tools for materially poor nations?). Any effort to
create abundance may also push along our society to a tipping point, or a
phase change. So, everything from another good web page to another funny
cartoon to an insightful twitter to some new understanding of material
science to some new design for a physical contraption helps. For me, I've
been telling lots of people about vitamin D and the risks of vitamin D
deficiency (a big risk for indoors computer users), since getting adequate
vitamin D
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
may literally save a trillion dollars a year or more in global health care
costs (by preventing some heart disease, cancer, extreme autism, influenza,
tooth decay, depression, schizophrenia, and more), which then would free up
abundant resources to put into other things. So, anything people do in these
directions helps make a difference.

A related item by me:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005081.html
"""
If the global health care costs of treating all the diseases that have been
suggested related to Vitamin D deficiency each year in whole or in part were
totaled up, from flu through cancer to schizophrenia, it might total in the
trillions of dollars per year in costs.
If people were somehow getting less Vitamin D because of the societal
consequences of patents (including competitivenesses among researchers, but
also making techniques to costly to use or delaying their widespread
adoption), it is possible the the consequences of proprietary knowledge from
just this one issue might have cost our global society many trillions of
dollars and untold personal suffering. Enough money to fund endless
researchers making more free knowledge. Meanwhile, the University of
Wisconsin got a little bit bigger.
Obviously, I'm all for the Vitamin D researchers at the University Wisconsin
as well as other universities getting all the resources they need to do good
work. But, there may be a huge problem here with public funding strategies
or research. The proprietary approach to research knowledge may literally
have been costing trillions of dollars a year (in current dollars) for
decades taken across the globe. For the past fifty years, at two trillion a
year in excess medical costs, this might add up to US$100 trillion in excess
medical costs due to such medical knowledge being proprietary and
researchers not cooperating more.
Of course, then the huge public health bills are used to justify
*increasing* the proprietary aspects of medical knowledge to create more
artificial scarcity -- which is a tremendous and sad irony.
"""

Still, some efforts could be more effective than others. And everyone has
their own interests. One approach is to envision what future you want and
then work backwards to figure out steps to get there. But sometimes the
futures we think we want are not the ones we might most like. It may make
sense to find happy communities that exist now and think about why they are
happy, and then think about how to spread that to everyone who wants it if
it makes sense. So, there are tipping points in that kind of social
understanding, too.

It's hard to figure out how to spend a little time and money well. :-)

Money is a collective fantasy, after all. :-) What sort of collective
fantasies would we rather be having as a living society than money? So, a
focus on money can be misleading, even if it is true that in our society
money is a useful tool sometimes.

And then there is this argument against planning by John Cage: :-)
http://www.georgeleonard.com/cage.html
"Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor
to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life
we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and one's
desire out of its way and lets it act of its own accord."

For some people, waking up to the life we're living means going out and
making things, just because that's what they want to do. :-) Maybe the
tipping point will be when lots more people do that? And how do we help
everyone get to that point? Now we are back at the issue you raise but
from a different perspective. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
(With that said, ironically, I'm going to be focusing on making some
proprietary software for the near future, sadly, but at least to help people
make more abundant content in other ways, so I'm not going to have much time
to keep up with this list or replies on this.)