Hi Rasmus, thanks for your contributions, regarding 'capitalism' will fail ... I think it always helps, and avoids unnecessary controversies, to separate the market from capitalism, open and distributed manufacturing may still use market dynamics of trade and exchange, but a system where workers and producers would own their means of production would by definition not be capitalism, which is defined exactly by that separation, turning both work and capital into commodities. If producers would commonly own their stock, they would not have to conceive of their labour as a pure commodity. Of course, this is not to say that it is not conceivable that open and distributed manufacturing could also go in many ways beyond market dynamics ... for example, imagining a network of cooperating mission-oriented enterprises, owned in common stock by the producers of the value themselves, could use open book management in their network, leading to the same kind of mutural global coordination that is now already used in immaterial peer production. Michel Michel On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Rasmus Wikman <[email protected]>wrote:

A long read, hope you take the time!

To clarify; I'm approaching this from a technological perspective purely out of strategic reasons and time constraints. While it would be reasonable to have a broad societal discussing regarding new political models, there's no time as I see it. The tiger and many other species are probably already beyond saving due to infertility. This is my main concern.

The current economical model, capitalism, is based on the fact that we needed to mount up large amount of capital to collectively afford industry.

With recent developments - like OSE, RepRap and Arduino - industry is moving to open and small scale. They are prototypical but requires only attention to become viable.

With industry smaller in scale and easier to set up, capitalism will fail. Small initiatives is and will always be faster and more creative than the behemoths we see today.

While many intellectuals have advocated free market economy as the best economical model, I'd say that open market economy is closer to reality. It only requires one company in each industry to open their economy and it will become the new way to compete. All things open.

One way to achieve this would be to through democracy open up state owned car and aeroplane factories and share manufacturing know-how with the open movement. But as you know, the global political climate today is far from constructive, so a faster path is to use what open information there is to achieve this.

There is one crucial standard, called JDF (short for Job Definition Format). It's mainly intended for the printing industry, but it contains all relevant methodology needed for any industry. And as the inkjet-printing technology is maturing, its uses are broader than just ink on paper; it's chemicals on a surface and could also be used to print solar cells, biological cells, you name it. That's open chemistry and in effect open pharmaceutics among other things.

Production methodology is semantics, removing the names for what we call things and looking at it from a purely technological perspective, JDF can be used as a basis for all industries.

So, what I'm trying to say that the most effective way to change society for the "better" is to change the foundation; economy. After that, new models for education, healthcare, etc will have to be sorted out.

When the open movement achieves the milestone of creating food and housing cheaper than the current economic model, open and free, a new society is born as these are the two fundamental needs of any human being aside from freedom of thought.

At least I would choose free soy and collective housing to be able to work for the collective instead of what we refer to as "luxury" - Mindless consumption on a dying planet.

With a community owned communication and information system, all this can be achieved in "no time". Because that's what society is, a systematic way of finding and collecting food and building shelters. Less is more.

Best regards,

Rasmus

http://opensourceecology.org http://reprap.org http://www.arduino.cc http://www.cip4.org

On 30 jul 2011, at 08.58, Michel Bauwens wrote:

...

Dear Rasmus,

Thanks for contacting us. I'm sharing your request for feedback regarding Ubuntu Online, with the ContactCon and Open Manufacturing lists, as they more of a technical bent,

http://www.ubuntuonline.me

Michel

First; I'm very glad I found your Foundation. A relief to see that there are other in the world that are concerned about the society!

My reason for joining; I co-founded a printing company some years back and built a complete production management software for us. In the browser, based on open source software and standards only.

After that I created a prototype web based design application to forgo the commerical alternatives to give everyone the possibility to design.

I realised that because we have a revenue model based in the physical world we don't have to rely on advertising, subscriptions and transactions.

While it might sound like nothing, I firmly belive it to be the fastest and least destructive way of re-achieving an open and free Internet. When the physical industries realise they can use only open source; they will. And sponsor development of all things open source.

Instead of trying to recreate the Internet, I believe that it would be best to create a global P2P web based OS. The Internet is in it's essence a collection of static and dynamic applications, just like a desktop OS. So the next step for me was naturally to create a web based operating system since it's technologically possible.

In the long run, this would mean that open hardware initiatives would have access to the same production management software as everyone else.

I chose the name Ubuntu Online because I believe Ubuntu to be the best of open source initiatives. Mainly because it marries the "old world" with the new.

http://www.ubuntuonline.me

It's still a prototype and the description is rough, but I'm working on it daily.

In an even longer run, it could be replaced with a completely new kind of system based on all open information and communication systems.

I'd appriciate any feedback and reflections on the matter!

Best regards,

Rasmus Wikman

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