Open Source Ecology Forums

Dolph1983

Hi all, i'd like to ask a good few questions starting with the basics and then getting a little more complicated. Hopefully any newbies can then quickly blitz through this thread and come out more clued up on the OSE, there seems to be weeks worth of information to sift through in the forum and i would like to get a good feel for this project as quickly as possible. A crash course...

1, Have i got the general idea of OSE correct?: Global villages will house up to 200 people and will be distributed across the face of the earth in areas where natural resources are abundant.

2, How many Global villages can be supported in total using current resource estimations?

3, What is the distribution of the villages expected to be in terms of distance apart and how big are they?

4, Does a trade network join villages together or are they all self sufficient?

5, Are the villages self governed?

6, Who gets to have children?.

7, Roughly how long will it take before high tech equipment is produced? (the good stuff like complicated medical kit, Ultrasound or MRI)

8, Can people move between villages when they fancy new scenery, like an exchange system?

9, Is there a limit on technology or is technological advance to be pursued?

10, How does the transition between current civilisation to OSE occur and what is the timescale?

Many thanks, Stu.

StevenBiles

Stu, welcome. OSE is more about creating tools than social structures. In a nutshell from the FAQ: "OSE is working on the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), an advanced, industrial economy-in-a-box that can be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world."

Good places to get started are the crash course and FAQ:

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/FAQs

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Crash_course_on_OSE

Once the tools are available, users can create their own social structures. Given a set of cheap, durable, open source tools for small scale industry, how would you answer questions 2-10?

Matt_Maier

1, Have i got the general idea of OSE correct?: Global villages will house up to 200 people and will be distributed across the face of the earth in areas where natural resources are abundant.

>> I think you put the pause in the wrong spot. It's not the "global village" "construction set" it's the "global" "village construction set". The idea is that it could be used anywhere in the world to build a village. What village people want to build, and where, is up to them.

2, How many Global villages can be supported in total using current resource estimations?

>> We can't do calculations like that until at least after the GVCS is finished. Even then, the GVCS will continue to evolve over the next decade. It's more of a journey than a destination.

3, What is the distribution of the villages expected to be in terms of distance apart and how big are they?

>> It's not expected to be anything. There are already thousands of different designs for sustainable villages of one form or another. Hopefully the GVCS will allow people to finally start building some of them.

4, Does a trade network join villages together or are they all self sufficient?

>> Either? Both? The point is to provide more options. They can try to be self-sufficient but they'll always have the option of utilizing the global economy if they want to.

5, Are the villages self governed?

>> OSE figures better options will naturally lead to better government. The exact shape of that government is up to the governed.

6, Who gets to have children?.

>> Not a consideration.

7, Roughly how long will it take before high tech equipment is produced? (the good stuff like complicated medical kit, Ultrasound or MRI)

>> Haha...it's going to be a while. Maybe never. The GVCS is a system of "tools that make tools." Appliances, like washing machines and ultrasound machines, are up to other people to open source.

8, Can people move between villages when they fancy new scenery, like an exchange system?

>> No. LOL, sure, why not. OSE isn't trying to dictate anything to anyone; merely provide alternatives.

9, Is there a limit on technology or is technological advance to be pursued?

>> Open sourcing ALL the technology is the ultimate goal. We'd like to see an open source version of everything. Ultimately, we suspect the open source approach to technology will become the dominant paradigm. It simply gets better faster. It will naturally overtake closed source technology.

10, How does the transition between current civilisation to OSE occur and what is the timescale?

>> OSE is open sourcing industrial and agricultural infrastructure. Change in those areas is measured in decades. Additionally, the GVCS machines will work just fine outside of the GVCS. We hope they will be adopted for jobs that simply need one piece, in addition to jobs that need the whole thing. So there won't be an identifiable transition. Open source tech will just gradually replace everything else.

Dolph1983

Thanks fellas,

I like the GVCS, it's a no frills approach to machinery which makes a lot of sense.

11, What is the minimum size of productive agricultural land required to support 200 persons living an OSE lifestyle? (how much land are you using for the experiment).

12, Do you envisage a scenario where your village would have to defend itself?

13, How does the OSE lifestyle fit into the constitution and laws of America?

14, Is the OSE idea: to live under the control of the established state and federal governments or do you want a new type of national or even global government?

15, Does OSE help to reduce global population increase?

16, Within the context of a finite resource pool of earth: do you think OSE villages are a permanent solution to humanities problems?

Is it not the case that technology IS the reason why humanity has ended up in dire straits and that a permanent solution to our problems would be to learn the wisdom of indigenous tribes people. They can live in true peace and harmony with their environment with no need for technology, in essence, 'they are satisfied with what they've got'. Their energy demand is sustainable, their population remains stable and they exist peacefully most of the time. Until we have learned their wisdom we are flogging a dead horse, nothing else will solve our problems, they all originate from greed, personal and corporate greed.

Stu

Matt_Maier

I should mention that I'm answering for myself, not for anyone else, and I don't think OSE really has an official stance on most of these questions.

11, What is the minimum size of productive agricultural land required to support 200 persons living an OSE lifestyle? (how much land are you using for the experiment).

>> Probably depends on the local environment and skill of the villagers. I think OSE is trying to support 200 people with 200 acres, but we'll see.

12, Do you envisage a scenario where your village would have to defend itself?

>> Nope. See the following answers.

13, How does the OSE lifestyle fit into the constitution and laws of America?

>> Perfectly. OSE is a technological revolution, not a political one.

14, Is the OSE idea: to live under the control of the established state and federal governments or do you want a new type of national or even global government?

>> OSE is just a better way to turn raw materials into the stuff people need to survive and prosper. It's a tool. Tools don't suggest or imply any particular political organization. And we're a long way from OSE's work changing anything enough to be blamed for social changes, let alone political ones. Don't get ahead of yourself.

15, Does OSE help to reduce global population increase?

>> I don't think so. It will help to reduce the stress of the increasing human population.

16, Within the context of a finite resource pool of earth: do you think OSE villages are a permanent solution to humanities problems?

>> It's not a panacea. All the same problems will still exist. OSE is just a better way to deal with them.

Is it not the case that technology IS the reason why humanity has ended up in dire straits and that a permanent solution to our problems would be to learn the wisdom of indigenous tribes people.

>> Not in my opinion. I see technology as the only reason humanity is distinguishable from all the other mammals. Better tools are better. As for OSE specifically, Marcin has explicitly clarified (several times) that OSE is not a "back to nature" type of endeavor. The goal is to maintain a modern level of technology. Additionally, the GLOBAL Village Construction Set is being designed to work anywhere on Earth, including places without indigenous tribes. So their advice could be useful, but still of limited utility.

They can live in true peace and harmony with their environment with no need for technology, in essence, 'they are satisfied with what they've got'. Their energy demand is sustainable, their population remains stable and they exist peacefully most of the time. Until we have learned their wisdom we are flogging a dead horse, nothing else will solve our problems, they all originate from greed, personal and corporate greed.

>> Philosophically...it would seem that the greedy people who started developing their technology are now firmly in power, so one has to question the usefulness of sustainability for its own sake. At any rate, if the natives are so great what are you doing on the internet? Trying to fight fire with fire? Are you going to spread the word that everyone should get off the internet and then be the last one on it just to make sure everybody else left?

Dolph1983

The GCVS is an interesting project, i've yet to dig down into the actual philosophy of the guy who created it all.

The GVCS will undoubtedly be adopted by those who would like to become 'prosperous' as westerners call it. Places like Africa will be jumping all over this GCVS stuff but what we really have to ask is: does this approach actually solve our most deep routed problems? Population growth, energy consumption and climate change are the major issues which will accelerate during the 21st Century. Out of those 3 main issues will come major international conflict. I can see how GCVS helps to reduce two of these main factors but it is not a complete solution.

The only strategy which makes sense is the one where thorough contingency planning has taken place. I'm no prophet, but i have a very good understanding of 'people'. The fact that OSE does not feel the need to defend itself from anything is deeply concerning. Humanity is about to hit some of the most unpredictable times ever faced and the assumption that you will not have to defend yourselves is very foolish. An open mind is required, not a closed, arrogant approach where people 'think' they 'know' what will happen.

i'll be supportive of OSE, just as long as i don't find some Utopian fantasy underpinning the whole idea. A few years back i came across something called The Venus Project. A utopian fantasy consisting of a resource based economy and a free open society with no laws, one where all the people would have everything they desired and robots would tend their needs. But they could never satisfactorily answer how they proposed to keep population under control, they just believed 'it would all be OK'. IMHO, It was total cobblers.

Using the 200 people per 200 acre estimation we can work out what the proposed global population would be, based on today's figures. We can take the area of the surface of the earth and allocate it into 200 acre plots. If there is enough productive land to house and feed 7 billion people then OSE is OK. If not we've got a problem.

I'll do the maths and post it so someone can check it.

They can live in true peace and harmony with their environment with no need for technology, in essence, 'they are satisfied with what they've got'. Their energy demand is sustainable, their population remains stable and they exist peacefully most of the time. Until we have learned their wisdom we are flogging a dead horse, nothing else will solve our problems, they all originate from greed, personal and corporate greed.

>> Philosophically...it would seem that the greedy people who started developing their technology are now firmly in power, so one has to question the usefulness of sustainability for its own sake. At any rate, if the natives are so great what are you doing on the internet? Trying to fight fire with fire? Are you going to spread the word that everyone should get off the internet and then be the last one on it just to make sure everybody else left?

'greedy people who started developing their technology are now firmly in power' yes and they will do whatever it takes to stay there.

The natives in the jungle have true sustainability. Most of us westerners don't have any idea what it takes to live in a sustainable society, we've been socially engineered in societies which are most definitively NOT sustainable.

'The goal is to maintain a modern level of technology' which we can do, for a while. But there are not enough resources to feed an eer increasing number of mouths or clothe everyone, give everyone a laptop and a car and a room to sleep in. by the time 7 billion people are living at what we refer to as a modern standard of living there may be no resources left.

'At any rate, if the natives are so great what are you doing on the internet? Trying to fight fire with fire? Are you going to spread the word that everyone should get off the internet and then be the last one on it just to make sure everybody else left?' haha, no mate, i love the intenet (but that does'nt mean i think it's sustainable). I'm man enough to accept that i'm as big a part of the problem as you are. I'm a human, we're the most destructive species on the planet. Many of us may point and laugh at the native savages in their mud huts, but plenty of 'developing' civilizations have come and gone in the same time they've been tucked away in the jungle chewing their coca leaves and guzzling ayahuasca :) they are survivors and they have wisdom.

DavidIAm

We use easily accessible resources because we have them here easily accessible. If we don't have resources the very idea that we'll just fall over dead is absurd; we'll simply adapt to the new situation. Perhaps we'll consume less, perhaps what we consume will come from different places. The only context in which our current behavior as a society makes sense is the one we're in. If the context changes, then our behavior will change. We won't die, we won't 'run out', not collectively. Realities will change and the balance of value among the market and technology and weather and people will rearrange to suit the new situation.

Energy is copious - solar, wind, wave, hydro, nuclear, geothermal. We can't realistically run out of that. And if survival means consuming more energy, we'll consume it. Because we prefer survival.

Food? It doesn't take much space to grow food for a person. If its important to have space to grow food, we'll make it, layer it, stack it up, and dump energy into it to make it happen. Can I trade energy for food? YES. There ARE enough resources to feed people, and there always will be within the lifetime of the planet.

Climate change? We'll adapt. That is our talent, that is what we do.

But HOW will we adapt? I don't know. I can't know, I haven't faced the problems with my fellow humans to solve the problem yet. But I will, given a chance. Not knowing the answer to a problem does not mean the basic idea is wrong or untenable, it just means its not fully developed.

I suspect more and more of humanity will spread across the stars eventually - consuming far more energy per-capita than we do now - but the universe has no shortage of energy, and the continuation of our species is not limited entirely to this county, state, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, solar system, or arm, or galaxy.

Dolph1983

OK i've done a bit of maths, here goes,

based on 200 acres of fertile land being enough to sustain 200 people we get:

Surface of the earth: 148,300,000 km2

productive land is estimated at 18% of that.

148,300,00 x 0.18 = 26,694,000 km2 of productive fertile land.

200 acres = 0.80937km2

26,694,00 km2 / 0.80937 = 32,981,207 plots of fetrtile land (200 acres)

They are adjoining plots which would turn the entire planet into one giant conurbation.

At 200 persons per 200 acres we have a maximum global population of:

32,981,207 x 200 = 6,596,241,521 = 6.6 billion people

We already have 7 billion people on the face of the earth, so to fit everybody into 200 acre plots would mean each village would need to be able to sustain 225 people. Population is projected to be 8 billion by 2027 and 9 billion by 2045. So by 2045 the villages would each need to house 290 persons.

references:

http://www.shareguide.com/Ecological.html

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml

http://www.npg.org/facts/world_pop_year.htm

DavidIAm

that implies that there will be nobody at all, say, 100 group or 50 group people or even 25 group people sustainable on 200 acre plots of less-productive land, of which there is a rather large quantity in the world.

Sounds like we could quintuple the 7 billion and still be alright to me.

Dolph1983

So i'll bring it all together. My point is this David, nobody wants to live on unproductive land they'd rather fight the next door neighbours for their productive land.

We have 7 billion people on earth today, if we split all the productive land up as suggested, ie into 200 people per 200 acres plot there would not be enough good productive land to go round. So we would naturally see conflict and fighting over those areas which are productive.

Unproductive land suggests that it would be missing vital resources like water, woodland, pasture, minerals so those people living on unproductive land would have to work harder than those on productive fertile land.

DavidIAm

I flat out disagree with your assertion that nobody wants to live on less productive land, or that it will take more work. Many people DO want to live there, you do not need 'full productivity' to have what a group of humans needs. And it doesn't take any more work to live there (unless possibly you insist on an unreasonable population density, which is silly). It is merely different work.

Life isn't fair, then you die. Some people have a different place they live that requires different adaptations for survival. Some of those adaptations are defense from those who would take from you, and non-aggression to keep people who retaliate for aggression from taking from you. The potential violent actions of people changes nothing about anything - it existed before such a scenario and it exists after such a scenario.

Further, has anybody even suggested that the sole configuration of the entire world should be 200 people villages on 200 acres? That's an absurd extreme which cannot conceivably occur - why are we running calculations for THAT, as if such extreme extrapolation means anything beyond confirming that "we don't actually know how the world will work in a thousand years". Which isn't news to me.

The real point of it is to explore possibilities. Maybe we can support 8 people to the acre on some land, and 8 acres to the person on other, with roughly equivalent effort. Experiment, learn, document, our children's children's children will use it and the intervening experiments to learn even more than we ever could.

Matt_Maier

You left out the "productivity" modifier. Technology, education and specialization dramatically increase the utility we can squeeze out of the same natural resources.

Humans are exactly like all other mammals...with one addition: we're creative. That little trick has enabled everything that has ever been attributed to humanity. The more people we pump out, the more minds we have applying that little "creativity" trick to our problems. It only takes ONE mind putting just the right spin on a problem to solve it for everyone else. More minds means more solutions.

Personally, I think the open source paradigm is the next phase. As a larger and larger base of open source technology becomes available to more and more people we will become even more efficient. Just look at a couple of the bits of tech that have been produced already. The RepRap is $500 and performs the same job as machines starting at $10,000. The lifetrac is $6,000 and performs the same job as machines starting at $20,000. And they're both more than just machines. They are educational tools. Instead of hiding how they work, their inner mechanisms are shoved in people's faces, DARING them not to understand the machine. Anyone with the slightest interest or need can gain the education that's so vital to improving things. This is just the start. This stuff evolves. It will reduce our energy needs by an order of magnitude. It will increase our free time by an order of magnitude. More people, living on less, with plenty of time to solve problems...I'm excited, not worried.

danielravennest

The GVCS does not have to be applied in a village situation. You could have a network of people living near the edge of a large city, working together but integrated into the local economy. They don't all have to live on the same plot of land, just be able to exchange the output from the farmland for the output of the machine shop, and be able to help each other as needed.

Dolph1983

As you rightly say David these villages are not going to cover the earth, not by any stretch, they'll be few and far between.

The 2013-14 experiment should show that with good leadership, a group of carefully selected individuals can live self sufficiently while using the GVCS to manufacture and sell goods.

open source will see a rapid uptake, the 3rd world will be falling over themselves.

In the UK the barrier to this sort of village is land price, you can't find many plots of good land, let alone plots of 200 acres.

I'll be interested to see how the experiment goes and what sort of goods are produced.

Thanks guys.

Matt_Maier

Ideally, a GVCS-based village would be able to produce enough excess to rent/lease a nice plot of land. It would actually increase the value of the area. So once it's proven people might be excited about providing land to draw in a GVCS group.

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