Open Source Ecology
Open Source Ecology takes an open source approach to technology development with the aim to empower individuals to develop their own self-sufficient ecovillages without depending on supply chains, trademarks & corporations.
‘Factor E Farm’ provides a tool set that makes it possible for individuals to become self-sufficient. Tool set’s include instructions on how to create construction machines, tractors, solarpanels etc. at a quality level that comes close to commercial machines. All tool sets for open source technology are being published on the open source ecology wiki so others can use and further develop the material. Watch this video to see some of their machines in practise.
I’m quite impressed by this approach since I do personally believe that the open source culture can be transferred to many different value-driven fields. Ecological living is an area where concrete solutions and expertise could easily create benefit by being spread more openly via the Internet.
In the area of sustainable development there seems to be a big disconnect between corporate sustainability communication and actual solutions that are being applied. Maybe there is something even bigger corporations could learn from this simple concept & collaborative approach.
More information:
Listen to this podcast or read the 5Minute intro below:
Factor E Farm (about)
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
[...] here: Open Source Ecology | Ideaplants This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Innovations, [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Interesting project. There seem to be many parallels to the computer open source movement, as they are re-implementing existing products with another focus, like simplicity and durability instead of planned obsolescence.
It would be an interesting experiment if we could have a real alternative of sustainable and durable products to the fashion-driven throw away stuff. On one side, fashion seems to be in peoples genes, as most(?) are easily motivated to throw away perfectly good clothes for staying in fashion, which is nothing else than to trick them with group conformity into regarding their existing stuff to be obsolete. Considering that people can be tricked with group conformity to club their neighbors to death in wars, this isn’t as surprising as it may seem at first …
On the other hand not all obsolescence is planned obsolescence. Since our technological development storms ahead at an immensely quick pace, a significant amount of obsolescence is unavoidable.
One could make a case that open sourcing requires some technological plateau at which technological progress slows enough to allow actors to refine the technology beyond the mere development-production-obsolescence cycle. In computers, the Unix operating system resembled this technological plateau as PC operating systems were stagnating around the absymally designed Microsoft Windows in the 90s, a window of opportunity opened for Linux as an open source alternative for small computers, focusing on different goals like consistency and stability, for which Unix provided the freely available technological base (no basic research needed for Linux).
On the other hand, in current mobile phone development fast innovating Apple seems to make it rather difficult for open source alternatives in phone operating systems.
On the third hand
the economics of these fast product-life-cycles are based on cheap unlimited resources, which are considered externalities (somebody will conquer another continent after we drained out this one, and there will be natives selling us their stuff for glass beads …). Once all continents are industrialized that story is over, and new windows for sustainable stories might open …