[p2p-research] The Free Fridge Argument

Tue Apr 7 12:37:55 CEST 2009

really great nathan ...

could you publish this  as such in Ning, (i tried, didn't want to post for
some reason) and perhaps in a more cogent way for the regular blog ...

i can only react mid-april

Michel

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Nathan Cravens <knuggy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Michel,
>
> I couldn't help getting all gitty when you mentioned the OS Fridge in a
> recent lecture. Unless this argument was tied up near the end of the
> presentation cut from the video, I don't believe you argued the free fridge
> successfully. Oh my! Let's then explore some ways we can better convince our
> audience a free OS fridge will happen via universal p2p methodology.
> Because, clearly, we know it will happen.
>
> Official sounding theory to cite
>
> The theory of productive recursion is one Marcin and I are cooking up to
> argue--or at least which aims toward--the free fridge. I did some quacking
> on recursion and Marcin fabricated the formula. For fun, I call it the
> Cravens-Jakubowski theory of Productive Recursion.
>
> Productive Recursion: Production methods used to lower cost of products
> when simplified for rapid personal fabrication.
>
> http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Productive_Recursion
>
> Summary
>
> "The section below shows rather than paying $3000 for at cost production of
> the CEB press ($2k in materials, $1k in labor) - already a substantial
> factor of 10 lower than the competition - we intend to produce it at $1400,
> half of the previous cost - for factor 20 cost reduction over the industrial
> counterpart. If typical industrial product is 4-6 times above cost, we are
> saying that we can produce items at 8-16 less cost than the mainstream
> industrial production. This is a hint at abundance economies, though it
> requires physical proof for validation - by building the item in question
> from scrap steel in a flexible, community-supported fabrication facility. "
>
> Given all things P2P, this approach, we're convinced, accelerates faster
> than ever toward a fridge we can walk into town and pick up without need for
> monetary metrics. Let's explore how this can be done:
>
> 1. Establish Local Fab Lab
> First we need a locally accessible fab lab to build the Fridge anywhere on
> the globe.
> All labs are standardized for customization so the same Fridge can be built
> worldwide at the local lab. Standardization ensures people or machines can
> follow the same instructions to produce a full functioning Fridge. Universal
> standards also ensure materials production, distributed assembly, and
> transport networks are best unified to direct toward personal fabrication to
> the greatest extent possible.
>
> 2. Establish Materials & Transport Network
> This asserts how materials are organized locally and globally to feed the
> lab. A fab lab functions not without materials and a transport network to
> delivery necessary material resources. We can imagine this materials network
> as physical nodes and links represented by a semantic web interface.[1][2]
>
> 3. Establish Product Design Coordinated with Fab Lab and Materials &
> Transport Network Design
>
> All products, including the design of the Fridge, are notified of the
> design proposal and in turn these communities build a more efficient and
> flexible Fab Lab and Materials & Transport Network to fabricate the
> forthcoming design.
>
> 4. A global community forms a single hub to create the best Fridge ever.
>
> What are the design challenges for product assembly?
>
>    - Design of the fridge itself
>    - Design of the fabrication method or tasks performed. The instructions
>    people or machines follow to construct the product
>    - Materials distribution and transport network is redesigned as needed
>    to align with demand. Materials are delivered to labs as demands are made,
>    or in our case, as fabs are queued for assembly.
>
>
> 5. Foreseeable Production Transitions
>
> Before we explore production transitions, let's note the notion: "nothing
> is free." Presently, we know the material world as finite. The p2p
> organization of production or peer production (open manufacturing) model
> presented reduces scarcity to 'practically' free status-- meaning--the
> production model illuminated here makes stuff 'free enough' as not to
> warrant a monetary status in the foreseeable future. To achieve zero
> monetary in production, costs may be reduced first until organizational
> nodes are universally linked to eliminate all monetarily pegged scarcities.
>
> The first two points above demonstrate the scarcity cost barriers to break
> via a global p2p platform. The 3-4th point--design--is already proven a
> financially free enterprise. It involves mostly time and effort and assumes
> costs are already paid or appropriately externalized. The "reward" or
> "payment" for this mass amount of cognitive actions is "given a return in
> investment" by generated a better Fridge for less, and further, nothing less
> than nothing unless otherwise requested. The ordering of these areas may not
> reflect the order in which costs are reduced or removed, yet this section
> explores how costs are reduced or removed conceivably before actual trail
> and error meets the variety of unknowable challenges ahead.
>
> Like any decent futurist, we'll break it down for our client into at least
> two scenarios which assumes a progression toward--and in so doing arguing
> for--technological unemployment. This story time is to better imagine, if
> but incompletely, some of the challenges ahead in our journey toward a world
> in which a free Fridge is made. I invite you to write scenarios in addition
> to these in light of your knowledge and imagination accessible from here to
> save future trail and error and to accelerate the rapid movement toward a
> superbly advanced free Fridge building technology.
>
> Scenario 1: The Renaissance of Craft Production. 'Partially' free lab,
> 'mostly' free materials, and free labor (sweat equity)
>
> I live in Nacogodches, Texas and I want a free fridge, but the nearest
> 'almost' free fab facilities are in Austin, TX. Hey Bryan! I could pay the
> fab team to build the Fridge and ship it, but because I want as little
> monetary metric going into the cosmos, I travel to the lab personally to
> fabricate it. At this stage, there may be a waiting list to use the lab as
> other labs are under construction in the Austin area to meet this rapidly
> accelerant demand. It may cost per hour for me to use the tools (due to
> maintenance costs) at the lab, but I do it because building my own Fridge
> cost less financially compared to the mass produced version; or less than
> having a fabricator do it; even when my time is considered; which means I'm
> probably not part of the so called workforce. The value added in addition to
> the savings is by a fab lab that assures considerable customization of the
> Fridge and my empowerment in building a majority of it myself.
>
> Most of the Fridge parts were build from scrap metal by robots in a fully
> automated lab in Houston. This lab was designed after an open source
> collaboration effort with participation from MIT's Center for Bits and
> Atoms, University of Texas' Automated Design Lab, and University of Tokyo's
> Robotic Technology Research Initiative, to name a few notables. Materials
> then are shipped over in time for my appointment at the lab. Austin
> presently lacks cost effective demand to produce the mini-mills and rapid
> casting facilities until the next year or so. If I decided not to customize
> the Fridge, for a fee it would be assembled in Houston and shipped. Shipping
> is thus far additional cost. Folk globally are reducing transportation costs
> such as creating solar powered transport and self maintainable travel
> passages. In one district, Tokyo presently has a fully automated transport
> system, one our global community is working to replicate world-wide.
>
> An instruction program reads my unique Fridge design and instructs
> step-by-step how I build it in language my non-expertise understands. Do I
> use SKDB[3] or OSCOMAK[4]? Well, whatever the interface is we proceed! Based
> on a custom design, I install trance inducing led lights that emit patterns
> when opening the fridge. With the help of the laser, smatterings of haiku
> are engraved to fill the entirety of outward flat face of the Fridge. Its
> this level of customization that encouraged people to pay a little more than
> the mass production version in the past. These funds were in turn used to
> reduce production costs that have lead to this present stage. It now costs
> less even with these mentioned perks, as networks are standardized for
> customization and global participation develops the series of vital
> materials networks.
>
> To save time, we avoid how a monetary system might work as processes are
> made more efficient and work becomes play. In this foreseeable world it is
> obvious that work time will have less and less value as tasks are performed
> by machines and people become difficult to labor market. I'll discuss this
> issue later as such a topic alone warrants volumes of text to articulate,
> that is, after we've argued successfully that physical production is rapidly
> going toward the individual, abandoning the roughly two hundred year
> struggle between capital and labor, or if you like, by unifying and
> therefore dismantle the distinction between capital and labor as we venture
> into primarily use of neo-craft production better known as personal
> fabrication.
>
>
> 2. Toward Full Automation. Free materials, free lab, labor cost
>
> Materials are acquired, transported, recycled or upcycled[5] in a fashion
> that does not deplete ecological resources. All lab facilities either do not
> break down or able to regenerate without human effort. The term for this is
> permafacture.[6] The person may need to bare the travel expense
> (time/energy) to the lab to customize and observe the assembly. This may
> hardly be considered labor as at this stage it is hardly hands on, but not
> yet fabbed or able to ship directly to the home.
>
> 3. Full Automation. Free materials, free lab, no labor
>
> Robots can do it all. Fabrication facilities are aligned with materials
> networks seamlessly with each design creation and revision simplified in a
> manner attentive children can use to provide for themselves without parental
> involvement. This means legal citizenship, if such a thing exists at this
> stage, begins with mental aptitude rather than age. This is done without
> strong AI[7], but let's assume it exists anyway as a burden to our ethical
> perceptions. In whatever configuration or relative size you like, the Fridge
> is free at no cost monetarily or ecologically, yet perhaps this is at a cost
> to one's well exercised work ethic, at which point, this person deskills the
> machines so to perform tasks oneself to continue the anachronistic ethos.
> Machines are deskilled as needed at anytime to prevent a human slave class,
> a personal type dependent on machines for 'everything'. This machine
> deskilling option ensures everyone can learn with the hands how material
> artifacts are made. The end.
>
> Now where's my free Fridge?!
>
> Nathan Cravens
> Effortless Economy
>
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web#cite_note-15
> [2] The Semantic Web Revisited
> [3] OSCOMAK. Semantic Community On Manufactured Artifacts and Know-how
> http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Main_Page
> [4] SKDB. Societal engineering knowledge database.
> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Skdb
> [5] Upcycle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycle
> [6]Permafacture. http://p2pfoundation.net/Permafacture
> [7]Strong AI: 'real' AI or Artificial General Intelligence.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_artificial_intelligence
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> hi nathan,
>>
>> here's the short version,
>>
>> there's a slideshare link via
>> http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Bauwens-Presentations
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Nathan Cravens <knuggy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Michel,
>>>
>>> I'd like to see your slides and lecture notes when you have time to make
>>> these available.
>>>
>>> Nathan
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090407/99c54fa6/attachment-0001.html>