[p2p-research] Co-Owned Public Peer Property

[Nathan Cravens]

Hi Patrick,

I've been where you are. I've concluded that it is far more difficult to
convince those at the top to make novel adoptions as you have mentioned. It
is not fleshed out enough and the evidence that your proposal works is
either scarce, out of context to present Industrial conditions, or
unavailable. In that case, the type of proposal you make must attract those
the hungriest (at the bottom) to move forward with the change you are
advocating: putting profit into production itself to reduce finance and
increase production power. (as I understand it)

I'm an advocate of Open Source Fab Lab development, which I believe more
directly addresses what we all would like to happen: access/possession to/of
a thing itself rather than purchasing what is wanted or needed. Fab Labs
increase this access by providing the tools and the web provides the
instructions people input to generate the thing for a greatly reduced price
tag -- to my knowledge only in theory at present. We'll see how long it
takes before my advocacy leads to my hacking of code or "busting out the
torch." For now, my fabrications are in the realm of ideas expressed in
abstract written language; however well or poor it may be. I hope not to
dissapoint my peers much longer once I'm satisfied enough with the GAME
PLAN.

A study of production within MIT Fab Labs could conclude if costs are lower
case by case compared to market cost in the constructs made. The conclusions
of this study can then draw attention to dissolve the problem areas by
further refining or amplifying the less productive fabrication processes
into more productive ones. I have no doubt Smari is nailing away at this
study! ;) Those conclusions can be presented from here:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Productive_Recursion

Sam and I (and the OS Fab community) are presently developing business plans
for OS Fabs. These labs are under construction in Austin and Factor e Farm.
Let's work as a community to put business models, model resources, or even
model sketches here: http://www.appropedia.org/Open_Business_Models

At the time of this writing, I am half way through Neil Gershenfeld's 'Fab'
after hastily divulging over a 120 pages in one night, (I'm sure everyone on
the Open Manufacturing list has already read it in just a few hours or less
or MUST!) and I conclude based on my reading between the lines of this book,
the MIT Fab Lab enterprise, given Neil's spirit stays intact, will
eventually adopt much of what drives OS Fab Lab development once the
experimentations produce a model that works better. I look forward to
networking with the MIT guys only in terms of pointing them toward
organizers of the OS Labs themselves to use this "what works" with no
strings attached other than mutual benefit. It may be the rigid corporate
attachments that drive many MIT guys to the OS Fab platform before (less
evil?) corporate interests buy into the OS Fab platform, especially once the
methods are determined more productive and flexible. Smari I predict will be
the first! For now, he's more useful to us as a spy. ROFL!

In the meantime here's a food sharing proposal I call the Open Cafe ready
for deployment now: http://opencafe.wikispot.org/ I look forward to
developing the ideas there further with you (you may get to this before I
do) by attracting a partner network of community supported argicultures
(CSAs) to supply the food "for free." The Cafe is then a location to prepare
the food and host hungry people and revolutionary ideas! (that later become
conservative practice)

Right now, based on the experience from my CSA organizer friend, a
farmer/manager of a membership base of 30-40 people, its complicated enough
to get people to pay a farmer to produce food locally much less "work for
free," that is, work for the purpose of production itself rather than for
financial return. I believe that is mostly because many of us were
socialized poorly: to depend rather than empower ourselves within the
Industrial establishment. The return therefore must be well understood by
members: the return is in the product itself AND the product itself MUST
value higher when the work is done (by machines if you so choose ideally)
vs. the purchasing power of a currency: more product is then generated
ideally than can be purchased in the market. It MUST be that way or it fails
or is subject to failure or use of force to work, which in my view is
failure. If that ideal fails so too does that organization; the market takes
over as it were.

The market problem (oh my, I said it!) will cease when an organizational
approach facilitated by computing and the web provides more streamlined ways
of having tasks done (by people voluntarily and machines) in a more
leasurely manner. Costs are reduced when participation increases. If an
organization fails, it's poorly managed or the attractiveness of the
enterprise is not communicated well enough.

For the transhumanist/singularity people: when machines have an ability to
choose to do something else, they can make other machines that continue to
perform the functions we demand of them. That's my argument we can discuss
elsewhere among other cranks like myself and I'm sticking to it!


ROFL, we're almost there...
Nathan Cravens
Effortless Economy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090304/99d89d59/attachment.html>