tangible problems I always felt from as
long as I can remember about the power
of science that it could be used to
solve pressing issues or solve problems
when I studied chemistry at Princeton it
was so theoretical unapplied and I
thought okay well maybe if I go into
physics it would get better so I did and
was grossly disappointed we were
studying wave propagation and I couldn't
understand this one problem this one
equation like so I went to the professor
and said well what's this about like
where does this exist and he said well
oh it actually doesn't exist I just made
it up so it's like oh okay well so
that's what we do here and that was one
of those turning points where I said wow
what am I doing here in an absolute
abundance of resources power and human
development and culture and everything
still there's many issues namely the
resource conflicts poverty War
deprivation survival with the awesome
technology that we do have today
survival should not take a lot of
time when you really think about it all
of the wealth that we enjoy today for a
modern standard of living relies on
rocks soil sunlight plants water those
are all abundant yet the productive
mechanism of society is what makes it
scarce artificially so what if we can
survive and thrive up to a modern
standard of living and not only that at
2 hours a day of work and from local
resources how would that be the most
most important part of Open Source
psychology is this idea that with a
small amount of resources and a small
amount of money uh anybody should be
able to create a high standard living
for themselves um and do it in a way
that doesn't require a whole lot of time
a whole lot of money people can actually
be empowered by the technology that
we're creating here so rather than
rather than a big Corporation deciding
uh what machines can do for us we can
decide how we want machines to work for
us instead of relying on other people to
make things that we need we can make
everything that we need for ourselves
and we can do it better than Walmart can
do it we can do it better than slave
labor in China can do it we can make the
productive capacity that we need to live
the lives that we want in our own
backyards and we can do it in a
sustainable way we can make machines
that we can use to create material
abundance for ourselves and then we can
show other people how to do
it if you have 200 people get together
and if they want to put together a self-
sustaining Community they don't have
that many options as far as coming up
with the equipment and the machines for
doing that that's that's where the open
source ecology really comes in is the
costs of building these machines is
about 10% of what you could buy it for
commercially you know if you you take a
a full-blown John Deere tractor it's
almost impossible for anybody to go out
and try and build one of those
themselves I mean that's just a very
custom machine but if you're able to go
and take you know just off the shelf
engines and go down to your hardware
store and buy steel and then build it
yourself like like the lifetime then
that that's much more
realistic the benefits of a localized
economy are that the power stays within
the community the economic wealth
instead of your money the earnings going
all the way down the river what if we
can internalize that keep that wealth in
by having all that productive mechanism
built in you you produce the same the
the wealth stays in you don't have to
work so hard and you can have time for
your family and kids or whatever else is
more important to
you so it's a lot easier production wise
to just have one super compatible module
the power cube right now works with both
the life track and the CB press and comp
machines that we have with the iron
worker and the colda so that provides a
much simpler product
ecology because one power unit serves
multiple machines there's one thing
about just being able to look at
machines that have been developed onside
here and another thing to understand how
the development process went through and
what kind of documentation there is for
these machines such that they can be
replicated and improved on right
fortunately we have that ability to have
machine information in the digital
format and now we have Telecom the
internet to relay that information and
have anyone just copy over the files and
have access to it the model on their
computer so open source ecology tries to
capture the open source nature of
development and the fact that we're
connected to um to Nature to other
people to societal institutions that all
has to be considered if we were talking
about a paradigm to Make a Better World
open source was clearly the the the
trend the emerging Trend that was so
powerful uh demonstrate with open source
software like Linux the Linux platform
when a sufficient number of people come
together on a project that project
simply becomes better than anything else
so we're transitioning that into the
hardware space so what would happen if
people actually collaborate on making
Open Source Hardware we have lots of
Technology out there but to organize the
technology in such a way that it's
accessible without barriers to people
that's a very significant move forward
now it's there for the individuals to
organize themselves and to really
dig deeply almost to what you would say
a spiritual level in a way to really
change their attitudes and to take
advantage of what is there and to move
our civilization forward I'm hopeful
that humankind will arise to the
occasion and sees the opportunity
offered by this uh development open
source ecology is really about creating
the next economy The open- Source
economy and what's that mean it's an
economy that optimiz is not only
production which the present economy is
really good at it's effective in
production but distribution is not not
so great and how do you do that and that
is by
opening uh so-called giving away trade
secrets for free or developing Open
Source Products for just about anything
that we use so imagine a scenario we now
instead of Corporations all competing
Reinventing new wheel and so forth a lot
of competitive waste what if everybody
were to join together to make the best
products most robust products that are
open source that anyone has access to
producing them and therefore we can run
an economy in a collaborative way as
opposed to a competitive waste
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