[p2p-research] [Open Manufacturing] important appeal: social media and p2p tools against the meltdown

Thu Mar 5 07:36:23 CET 2009

Hi Michel,

Thanks for making this call.

What I have to present addresses the three questions asked by the author of
'Social Media vs. the Economic Recession'. Housing may need to be
manufactured out of Fab Labs at first until rent based vacancies are too
rampant, lowering prices down to practicality. Our contact to solve the
housing issue is Larry Sass. From
http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/2009/01/social-media-vs-recession.html:

   - practical/financial (e.g. how do I pay the rent/avoid my house being
   repossessed?)
   - emotional/psychological (e.g. how do I face my friends? where do I get
   my identity from now I don't have a job?)
   - directional (e.g. what do I do with my time? how do I find work?)

Here's an idea package to add to the TO DO NOW list:

The Open Cafe / Community Supported Agriculture / Fab Lab Alliance

Open Cafes:
The physical hub for activity. A place where meals are prepared by people
for people to eat for zero money. Its hip and empowering to dine/work/have a
chat here.

Community Supported Agriculture:
Enough participants work in DIY gardens or community farms and donate the
produce to the Cafe and or from government issued food cards. (I play both
sides for the same aim)

Open Source Fab Labs:
Cafes align with OS Fab Labs to fill out the resource necessity gap to
further save financial cost.

Wikis provide only an example for the communications medium used until
better mediums are made: easy to use and easier to organize. For now, let's
work with the communications we have ready-made: e-mail and wikis.

Here are a few, but hardly all, hoops to jump through to make this Alliance
a reality. This is just to prime the creative pump.

The Cafe is the focus:

   - A space and resources are donated for this purpose by those that see
   the benefit. It can begin in your home and branch out. In urban settings, it
   can begin with what is already public domain, the local park.
   - Food and beverage donation. Donations for the day/week can be viewed in
   advance on the Cafe's wiki. Most everyone will want to participate in
   production because everyone can go here for free. There are no consumers
   here, rather, this is where producers are born willingly. There is not much
   difference between consumption or production here.
   - If money is needed, a wiki shows expenses that need to be met and what
   is generating them; those in the Fab Lab then have something to make to
   reduce or eliminate that cost.
   - Event planning. This too is done in wikis and is a place for people to
   perform or have specific discussions at the Cafe or elsewhere (like at the
   CSA or Fab Lab) to benefit the Cafe and the people that go there. The Cafe
   is our focus, because its where all of our interests can unite: in putting
   food literally on the table.
   - Elaborate and replicate the Cafe as needed from here:
   http://opencafe.wikispot.org/

Other than crowdsourcing, here's another way the Trio can receive additional
funding until its less or no longer required. If one part of the trio has
more surplus funds than another, these funds are tapped by the Cafe or
Community Farm as needed based on the Open Source Pact or publicly viewable
and revisable mutual agreement. (when necessary) Ideally, this pact works
very well as a wiki. The establishment of a wiki contract shows in itself
how well the contract works.

The Sell Stuff to Get Stuff Business Model

I want to produce a Fab Lab to make 'almost' anything, but first need money
to build one, but I'm not interested in profit so much as getting these labs
up globally for abundant access so people can make what they want to have
(rather than purchasing it / bashing me over the head for one). In prospect,
once these labs are ubiquitous, I will ask "how can I make this?" rather
than "where can I buy this?" Later it will only be "where can I make this"
as desired. Knowing this foreseeable reality makes the presentation of Open
Business plans like this one even more relevant and necessary.

I then go to the market and see what's selling for a high return that's
easiest to make with as few tools and resources as possible. Once I've
reverse engineered (open sourced) the thing and simplified the production
process (potentially ignorant of patent law) I can now build it in our
feeble lab and sell it for a return (like on Ebay) in order to put more
tools in the lab which are then reverse engineered and resold to produce
more fabrication tools and so on until a fully replicable Open Source Fab
Lab is in every town around the world.

The Fab Lab is only an example presented in the story found in the preceding
two paragraphs. The basis of this model can work for a CSA and Cafe as well,
but I suspect OS Fab Labs will be the bread winner financially for these
groups, even if the bread comes from the CSA and made at the Cafe by real
people with real machines. I say OS Fabs will be the bread winners because
the stuff made there are more difficult than replicating Cafes or Farms.
Argument complete.

Conclusion

My presentation and prose may be a fault, but I believe the general ideas
are sound. If you disagree, its only based on my presentation. With your
help or without you even knowing it we will amplify and attenuate a version
of this proposal into practicality before generating something better. This
can begin by further refining the ideas described here to better assist:
viable application.

Support Michel and P2P Foundation, Factor e Farm and Appropedia, your local
OS Fab Lab, CSA, and start an Open Cafe. MIT, can you spare a dime? We'll be
fine given our persistence toward the aims touched on here.

Nathan Cravens
Effortless Economy

BTW, everything I have to say past, present, and prospective is public
domain. I'm only saying this once here. Just don't blame or hurt me (based
on my undisclosed definition of pain) if it causes a problem for you. Rework
it to your advantage, the advantage that works for the benefit itself works
the best, that is, that which works best in the longest run for the most
people.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks to Joseph (or was it Sam?), I came across
> http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/2009/01/social-media-vs-recession.html,
> which I will cover on the blog, and through some further linking on
> initiatives such as http://www.deskspacegenie.co.uk/
>
> Though commercial, it illustrates that social media and p2p tools can be
> one of the ways to help individuals and communities cope with the crisis,
> and even transform our  society and economy.
>
> Since this issue is eminently practical and affects human survival and
> well-being, I think we should cover these initiatives with more focus than
> usual.
>
> So here is a first appeal:
>
> - can you send me anything you have already found on the topic? The only
> requirement is that it represents some practical advance for those who would
> use it, making a real difference in their lives ...
>
> I will start the following page to keep track of it:
> http://www.p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Meltdown_Solutions
>
> Michel
>
> --
> 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/
>
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