[p2p-research] an update on the open hardware roadmap

Sat Oct 2 06:46:10 CEST 2010

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks Eric for these further elaborations to
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/assessing-the-open-hardware-roadmap/2010/10/01
>
> On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 4:36 AM, Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Above this level -which that catalog didn't get into because we were
>> focusing on open manufacturing itself- is specific products/artifacts and
>> designs for them. This was the level where my earlier Open Source Everything
>> proposal was. This is where things like Make magazine and Instructibles are.
>> Recipes for things. At that level you have your tree of larger 'industry'
>> classifications; domestics, health/medical, housing and architecture,
>> automotive and other ground transportation, marine transportation, marine
>> architecture, aerospace transportation, aerospace architecture, telecom,
>> computers/IT, energy products, and all the other stuff that, in some way or
>> another, ends up as a discrete artifact/product rather than a technique used
>> in production. The state of the underlying knowledgebase of technique is the
>> fundamental barrier to the development of products at this level.
>>Right now
>> this is a granite rock barrier because contemporary western culture has a
>> critical industrial illiteracy problem due to overspecialization of
>> education and runaway patent mania. So much of what we see in the open
>> source hardware venue here is rooted in reverse-engineering as a way of
>> using work on products as a means to cultivate the lower level knowledge of
>> technique. But we have no good method of structuring and disseminating that
>> knowledge so it's hard to distinguish from the specific recipes for things.
>>

Great blog post Eric. I'll elaborate further to say that an "open
source manufacturing" ecology that can address the problem you
describe looks more like a system of connected or interchangeable
parts that can be used to make other parts, and far *less* like a
Sears and Roebucks catalogue of all things that are made or makeable.

I think that the less it looks like finished product, and the more it
looks like pieces that can be fluidly used to make many finished
products in many ways, the better for practically everyone the ecology
of technologies will be. This is in part the true meaning of what we
refer to when we describe "wealth generating ecologies".

>> Then you have the science tree, which is about research rather then
>> production and underlies the technology tree.

As you point out further down the separation of "research" from
"production" is breaking down the more that networked design and
manufacturing emerge.

>>You have a catalog of research
>> tools, techniques, and methodologies that are organized in a hierarchy
>> paralleling the classic scientific disciplines. Medicine would be a peculiar
>> branch here where research technique carries over into 'practice' as a
>> 'treatment'. It doesn't produce goods. It intervenes in the
>> failures/maintenance of the human body as a service to society.
>>
>> One could also argue for a tree for the arts as well, which parallels the
>> style of organization of the science tree while linking into the technology
>> and science trees. Art, science, and engineering are all linked. Stage
>> magicians are some of the best engineers.
>>

I really agree with you here. Art and science are intertwined.

>> You see, when I think of an open technology knowledgebase I'm thinking
>> about a structured way of incrementally organizing pretty much all of human
>> technological knowledge as its artificial enclosures of professional and
>> corporate propriety are incrementally stripped away and a natural hierarchy
>> that relates them to each other is cultivated. I think we should see science
>> and technology in the way historian James Burke does. It's not a bunch of
>> separate things. It's a network. And one of the profound things about the
>> general open technology movement is the way it brings forth this sort of
>> Grand Unification of human knowledge as the patents, diplomas, and other
>> hold-overs of medieval guild mentality go in the trash and stop being a
>> barrier to cross-communication and cross-fertilization. As I noted earlier,
>> this is how I envision the Singularity. It's not some fanciful New Age thing
>> or about people plugging their brains into robots. It's when the combination
>> of the Internet, the social movement against expanding intellectual
>> property, and the quest for automation (the transcription of human to
>> machine knowledge) combine to bring Metcalf's Law into full effect on the
>> totality of technological knowledge.
>>
>> Eric Hunting
>> erichunting at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 30, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Topic: [OHANDA] Fwd: [ox-en] Open Hardware Roadmap
>> > James Barkley <james.barkley at gmail.com> Sep 29 06:39AM -0400 ^
>> >
>> > Just a few notes on the ohroadmap.org website:
>> >
>> > > The Table Of Contents sounds ambitious:
>> > > http://www.ohroadmap.org/table-of-contents
>> >
>> > > but all the respective pages are empty.
>> >
>> > Yes, but over the next 9 months Sam and I have committed funding for us
>> > to
>> > build out this roadmap in its entirety as part of our day jobs. Also,
>> > anyone
>> > can register on the wiki (username, email, and password are all that's
>> > required) and make edits.
>> >
>> > We've also provided a "dumping ground" page (
>> > http://www.ohroadmap.org/dumping-ground) where people can just spew
>> > freeform
>> > and we'll go back later and structure and incorporate this information
>> > into
>> > the main body of content.
>> >
>> > -jb
>> >
>> > --
>> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>> > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>> >
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>> >
>> > Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
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