Are there new technologies that will zoom local production and improve our resilience?

Of course.

In fact, nearly all of the technology we need, can be developed by people tinkering with solutions and sharing the results online.

Tinkering?  Yes.

Tinkerers working in networks invented airplanes, light bulbs, and personal computers.  Tinkering networks operate on the simple idea that:

• Lots of people prototyping solutions to problems and
• sharing their results with lots of other people
• can quickly invent and develop amazing solutions to difficult problems.

The Challenge

Here's an example of a tinkerer that has a pretty slick solution to a difficult problem:  Is there are resilient way to burn biomass locally?

One of the solutions we've begun to explore is the conversion of a septic tank into a biogas system (see the earlier letter, "Don't throw away your Wealth" for more).

Another solution is to develop a furnace or stove that uses (technical language alert -- beep, beep) gasification and pyrolytic processes that allow us to:

• burn nearly any type of biomass feedstock (wood, husks, etc.),
• in a smokeless/clean way (nearly zero smoke/fumes),
• and produces biochar (an extremely useful soil amendment produced by pyrolysis) as its primary waste product.

The closest I've seen to a simple technological design that would be appropriate for this is the Lucia Stove.  Here's a diagram for how it operates:

While there is a more elaborate injection molded version of the stove available, there's also an the origami version for disaster relief and development that ships as four pre-cut slats of metal that can be easily cut and bent to build the stove (which means it is easy to purchase and test out as an alternative to a BBQ).   The team at the Haiti Clean Stove Project documented their construction of one here.

Could this stove's design become the basis of a resilient furnace system?  Perhaps.

With some more work (primarily an automated method for feeding/cleaning it and fail safes to prevent problems), it could be a resilient furnace or stove that you and I would be happy to use.

Your guide to tinkering,

John Robb

Marcin wrote:

As founder of OSE, I am committed to voluntary interaction as the basis of the social contract. This means that I don't believe in coercion of any type. Yet, I am choosing the Creative Commons Share Alike License - which in blunt terms - forces (coerces) any user to share derivative work - whether they want to or not - if they use OSE's intellectual property. I believe that while it is not good that someone should not share their work, I believe that it is even worse to coerce - by taking away one's choice regarding sharing or not sharing.

I was against such coercion prior to certain recent events. I was recently disappointed to find out that a certain trusted collaborator was unwilling to engage in development on a particular project with us because a part of the design was copyrighted as proprietary. This made me rethink what happens to our work in the future - if someone copyrights/patents a certain improvement. I was not concerned much about such an issue - because:

• My experience shows me that there are many ways that patents can be sidestepped by human ingenuity - and patents would not effect the core direction of our work.
• Patents are moot when one is producing for themselves - which is going to be the increasing case as consumer society increases its skills and transitions to community-based solutions of relocalized production
• There is a sufficiency criterion that is essential in our work. If we have the highest performance machine, do we need even higher performance, if it comes at a cost? For example, we have developed a brick press that was demonstrated to produce a max of 16 bricks per minute. Do we really need a machine that produces 17 bricks per minute if we use even more power and finetune the speed even further? It's a moot point to do so, since there are systems considerations which indicate that 16 bricks is not only enough, but excessive in all but rare situations. -MJ 5/5/12

Thus, I am still not concerned personally that copyrights/patents will ever stand in our way - but the same IS a concern for some of our collaborators. Therefore, to ensure involvement of such valuable contributors, I am choosing the Share Alike license. This is relevant in a case where someone copyrights/patents an improvement on our work, and we lose contributors who are intimidated from further participation because of potential legal consequences.