Transcriber: Amber Qin Reviewer: Helena Bedalli
(Spanish) Hello.
Throughout the twentieth century,
industrial manufacturing in cities like Detroit,
created millions and millions of products and employed countless people.
But relying solely on industrial centralization
breeds dependency and creates economic vulnerability.
For example, when the factories in Detroit
were shut down and shipped overseas,
countless lives were destroyed
and the city still hasn't recovered.
That's because the current economy only optimizes production
and so it fails to meet the need of people all over the world.
But what if we could work together to create a new,
decentralized industrial economy based on openness and collaboration?
Let's create an economy that optimizes not only production but also distribution
while promoting environmental regeneration and social justice.
We can create an economy
that is beyond artificial material scarcity.
One that frees people's time for the pursuit of higher purpose,
and that is beyond resource conflicts.
That's the open source economy.
Openly licensing allows others to replicate, reuse, adapt, improve,
adopt, bring to scale, write about, talk about,
remix, translate, digitize, re-distribute
and build upon what we've done.
So I'm working with a project
called open-source ecology
and it was founded by Dr. Marcin Jakubowski.
He's a 2012 senior TED Fellow and a Shuttleworth Fellow.
We're building the Global Village Construction Set.
It's an open source platform of fifty different industrial machines
that it takes to build an entire economy at the local level,
with abundant natural resources.
It contains everything from a circuit maker
to a bread oven and a tractor.
And today we've prototyped over 18 different machines.
This is the open source tractor.
It's version 4.0
and it's the backbone of any kind of construction of agriculture project.
It's got a quick attach plate at the front
and you can put a number of different implements on it
and do all kinds of tasks in the field.
The compressed earth brick press
can make five thousand bricks in a single day from soil
and it's one of the most sustainable forms of construction known to man.
On site we have
a four thousand square foot habitation facility, with ten living units,
and a three thousand square foot fabrication and training facility,
all made with compressed earth brick presses.
So in order to make a proper brick out of soil,
you have to pulverize the soil
and so the soil pulverizer breaks it down into a fine mixture
and then it loads it up into a bucket
and it can drop it right into the hopper of the compressed earth brick press.
The ironworker is the backbone of any kind of metal fabrication process
because oftentimes you have to quickly shear really thick metal.
So, rather than using a torch or other cutting implement
that takes a long time, you can instantly
chop right through very thick metal like that.
You can also put a dye on it and punch holes and it's very fast.
So the open source cold saw
has a slowly rotating blade
and it's bathed in a cooling fluid.
And you can quickly cut through any kind of thick metal
but it doesn't create any kind of dust,
and it doesn't create any burns
so that when you touch it is cool to the touch after you cut it
and it doesn't cut your hand with burns.
And then using local timber resources we can make our own dimensional lumber.
And so you can make lumber of any size
for making a table, or you can make your own house.
And this coming week,
on site of the factory farm in Missouri
we are starting the build up of the first open source ecology micro-house,
and will be sourcing local timber with that.
And so, rather than designing the entire package
to have a different engine for every single machine,
we have a modular power unit that can be plugged in.
It's external, it can be tied together in series,
and it can power any of the machines in the package.
So that's part of our modularity in design.
We also have a computer controlled torch table.
So, a cutting torch can cut through thick pieces of steel,
but this one's connected to a computer.
And so we can predefine the pathways,
and then the computer controls how that torch cuts,
and it will accelerate our manufacturing.
And then, finally, on site, right now
we are building a water line at factory farm
and so this backhoe attachment allows us to quickly dig a trench.
And if we were to do that by hand it would take, you know, weeks.
We can do this in a couple of days with the backhoe.
So, part of the open hardware movement
means that we not only design machines,
but we also create extensive documentation.
The way that we distribute that knowledge to the community
is through the Civilization Starter Kit.
That's a DVD that you can download,
or order and it'll be shipped anywhere in the world for free.
It has all the documentation that anybody in the world would need
to build this independently.
For example, we have 3D models of all of our tractors,
and all the other different machines
that can be broken down into their sub-components.
You can rotate it and look at it from any angle
and really understand the machine before you try and build it.
You can zoom in and look at the sub-assemblies
and see how all the components work together.
And then also, this is the new version of the brick press that we are making,
and so before we actually decide to put any money or materials into it,
we can get designer view just based on the 3D model,
and then look at animations and stuff like that.
We also have fabrication reports
that allow people to see step by step how all the machines are made.
And we have pictures that detail every component and every part of the process.
Then also in the shop, whenever you want to fabricate a prototype,
fabrication drawings show you exactly where all the boreholes need to be
and how long the cuts need to be where the welds need to be,
and how everything is assembled together.
So you can print those out and have those right in the shop,
and that's pretty standard practice in any kind of metal fabrication.
And then finally, we created instructional videos
that use time lapse photography and show the entire fabrication
and assembly process for all the machines.
So anybody anywhere in the world can stop
pause, take a look, see exactly how this is made, via the video.
So how do we design it?
Because we are not the necessarily experts on everything in this.
So, we use the power of global collaboration
to design the machines.
For example, we have a survey that gets sent all over the world.
And it asks people to define their specific skill set
and we're developing a database of dozens and dozens of different skills
that work together for the machine design process, so that,
if we ever need to solve a problem we can rapidly assemble a team
in an online collaborative environment
to solve the problems with us.
And then the other day I was working on a trencher
and our YouTube channel has over 400,000 views every single year
so we harness the power of the crowd
to help us look at problems that we face so for example:
I had a problem with the trencher
and so I put the video detailing the problem on the website
and people chime in and they answer via YouTube
with their input on the design process.
And people are independently replicating the technology all over.
So in Texas we have mechanical engineers
doing stress test analysis and remote machine design.
Then people are building independently the compress earth brick press.
So this is somewhere in Texas.
They made the brick press
and now they're working on building sustainable construction
for their own community and this is them disloading the hopper.
And then we are also have remote machine designers in Texas
for redesigning our initial designs and making them better.
So this is version 6.0, the newest version of the power cube.
Everything is re-engineered so is accessible
right from one little panel.
And this machine is now being sold as part of an enterprise throughout Texas.
And then in Indiana we had another remote machine independent replicator,
he has made the compressed earth brick press
and now he is working on the electronics here in the video.
In Pasadena, California,
the very first independent replication of the life-truck happened
with two high school students
in their Polytechnic Institute.
And they recruited a fabrication shop to help them design this
and this is the first independent replication.
And then finally in Guatemala, and this a very exciting
new partnerships that's emerging
this is Andrés Botrán,
he is the first Food Security Secretary of the Guatemalan Government
and TED Global Fellow Manuel Aguilar.
Andrés owns one of the largest sugar refineries in Guatemala
and every season he employs thousands of rural Guatemalans to do the harvesting.
He has over three hundred mechanics
and a team of sixty engineers.
They have a massive fabrication shop
and a ton of scrap metal goes through
their enabled waste stream of scrap metal
and mechanical parts that they always go through.
And so, what they're going to do is take that scrap
and right now by October 1st they're building a life-track.
And so their plan is to take this design of the life track
they want to field test it in the field
and see if they can make any design improvements
before they mass replicated and distribute it throughout Guatemala.
So looking into the future,
what do we need to continue developing the GVCS
and finish the platform?
We need people with all kinds of skills:
like machine designers, lifestyle investors,
entrepreneurs, fabricators, curriculum developers,
information architects, software developers,
business mentors, field testers, prototypers,
contractors, permaculturalists, speech writers, funders,
everybody working together
and finally, the last piece of that is we need your involvement.
Thank you.
(Applause)