Open Source Ecology / Village construction kit

[TheAncientGoat]

I recently stumbled across this project while browsing the Minecraft forums (hiss! closed source! :P), and I've found it to pretty inspiring. They've already built and open sourced a tractor, brick making machine, various machining tools, an interchangeable "lego like" power source for their modularly designed equipment, at a fraction of the cost of industrial equipment (the prices range from 4 to 40 times cheaper). Their ultimate vision is the creation of self-sufficient resilient communities that can replicate themselves by producing these "village construction kits" and training people in its use, from what I've read, although it has come across as a bit.. fluid

Here is a blog post of theirs where they've used Sauerbraten to render a design they've made, and discuss gaming's usefulness in "making the world a better place", although they don't go into too much detail it's still an interesting subject.

What are your thoughts? Bright shining beacon of the open source way bravely fighting it's way into changing the world in a more direct way? Or a 60's hippie resurgence commune doomed to fail :P ?

[charlie]

Doomed to minuscule success. I'm sure they'll succeed at what they are doing but not at influencing society in any significant way.

[Julius]

Ahh, nice hippy attempt

IMHO good idea, but done by rich people who have too much free time.

To see some really interesting low tech stuff that's done by qualified people you should have a look at what's done in development cooperation projects working in rural 3rd world countries. A lot of that stuff would actually work just as well here in the "west" but people are too used to all the comfortable facilities the "civilization" has created (but make no mistake how thin and vulnerable that layer of civilization is ).

[TheAncientGoat]

Doomed to minuscule success. I'm sure they'll succeed at what they are doing but not at influencing society in any significant way.

I would claim a similar prediction, it suffers from a very large scale vision, that requires the implementation of (literally) tonnes of design and work (which is doable I guess), and /participation/ (which is the key turning point factor that they don't seem to accomplish that well). What's the reasoning behind your stance, other than some shared pessimism ?

IMHO good idea, but done by rich people who have too much free time.

One could very much claim that our "movement" (foss gaming, heck gaming in general) is much more guilty of that, only with a more questionable amount of "good idea" behind it: the attack would be more justifiable at that. I've always found the phrase "too much free time" to be very condescending, especially when applied to people who work hard to achieve something that requires skill and perseverance.

To see some really interesting low tech stuff that's done by qualified people you should have a look at what's done in development cooperation projects working in rural 3rd world countries. A lot of that stuff would actually work just as well here in the "west" but people are too used to all the comfortable facilities the "civilization" has created (but make no mistake how thin and vulnerable that layer of civilization is ).

I've heard of a few, but it would be nice if you could post a few of the ones you find most interesting

[charlie]

I'm too lazy to get into verbose discussion on this, since it's not something I care about. So, yer, pessimism...

[Julius]

One could very much claim that our "movement" (foss gaming, heck gaming in general) is much more guilty of that, only with a more questionable amount of "good idea" behind it: the attack would be more justifiable at that. I've always found the phrase "too much free time" to be very condescending, especially when applied to people who work hard to achieve something that requires skill and perseverance.

Ok I have to admit I was trolling a bit with that remark. I think however that using smaller amounts of free time, which would be otherwise be wasted with other stuff, lets say a hour a day as it is often done for FOSS development is of a different level than this. Sure the planning of these things could be done in a similar style, but actual construction of the prototypes takes full days if not weeks.
Sure everyone is free to have a weekend hobby like this, in fact I would probably enjoy doing this very much, but I am also a (relatively on a global scale) rich guy with too much free time
But lets be honest about it, unless you do it out of necessity or because you are payed for it (since other people need it) this will never really reach a state or distribution for something like that to really have the intended effect. In that sense it is thus just a nice hobby (but it could prove to be very useful knowledge to have in the nearish future )

I've heard of a few, but it would be nice if you could post a few of the ones you find most interesting

http://practicalaction.org/ has a few interesting ones, to download the actual guides you have to register with them however.

Overall there are some very interesting low tech bio-gas systems (and sanitation solutions in general)... all kind of (wind) pumping and irrigation tech and also (which I currently work with) small scale water supply systems.

But back in the 70ties UNICEF also did a lot of this stuff, very interesting practical guides to build hydro-rams for example.

[TheAncientGoat]

Well, the OSE guys do have commercial production / financial subsistence from their labour planned, so one could see it as a necessary job instead of purely a hobby; they claim that they have an order for their CEB press which should provide enough income to build and fund the development of the next generation presses..

Anyhow, the practical action link is interesting, definitely lots of cool tech in there, but I think the aim is slightly different (although more noble, one could say)

[Julius]

Sure the aim is different, but the tech is very much transferable.

[TheAncientGoat]

That is definitely true. I haven't seen any mention of Practical Action or any equivalent orgs on the OSE site, I'm thinking about how one can go about instigating discussion over the matter

[Julius]

Btw some other similar /related projects:
http://www.builditsolar.com/
http://solarcooking.org/
http://www.watersanitationhygiene.org/
http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/library.html
http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.appropedia.org/ (very much stuff)

And basically all the books in the "appropriate technology library" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Approp ... gy_Library )!