Today's the deadline for the latest MakeShift challenge, which graced the pages of MAKE, Volume 16. But since I forgot to remind you readers about the deadline, we're extending the deadline by 1 day, to Saturday, March 7 (tomorrow!).
Here's what you're up against:
Tick, Tick, Tick ...
The Scenario: You've worked late into the night as a computer engineer in the high-rise headquarters of an international bank, and you're finally heading with your briefcase to your car in the subterranean parking garage. Your car is the only one left on this dimly lit level, parked along a cement wall right near the elevator. But, as you pull out your keys and are about to hit the unlock button, you hear a loud beep behind you.
Startled, you turn to see an object against the wall just a few feet away with a pulsing red light on it -- and in the poor light, you can immediately make out an illuminated timer which is now ticking off the seconds from a 3-minute window!
There is a jumble of multicolored wires, and an array of three motion detectors set to cover a 180º field off the wall, all of which are wired into a small black box sitting on a large brick-shaped object that's slightly smaller than a shoebox. Also atop the brick and on its ends, you see three horizontal glass tubes that appear to contain mercury with wires at both ends, as well as a metallic-looking cylinder with several long wires jammed into the side of the brick-like mass. There's little doubt left in your mind now that this is a bomb! -- and your arrival here must've set off the timer.
The Challenge: Though you know how mercury switches work, you're uncertain of the purpose of the motion detectors, or of the black box -- could it contain a hidden transponder? If you try to move out of range or call for help with your cellphone, might your attempt to flee or the cellphone signal set the device off? Hell, even pushing the unlock button on your key ring now could send the wrong kind of signal, no? But panic is not an option, as it seems you have less than three minutes to decide your best course of action. So what are you going to do?!
What You Have: Your briefcase and pockets contain what a computer engineer might normally have, within reason -- if that includes a Swiss Army knife or Leatherman tool, so be it. Beyond that, your brain is the best tool you've got. So think fast, and ... good luck.
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Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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Awesome R/C Delta Wing flyer, dubbed The Towel, you can make in a few hours out of Dow insulation blue board, an R/C rig, and model plane parts. They've even put together a parts bundle of all the mechanics and radio for under $100.
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Be sure to watch the Maker Channel segment on Make: television this weekend. Episode 10 features Limor Fried testing her Cellphone Jammer on a certain MAKE Blog editor who'll remain nameless for now. Listen to the conversation that Limor interrupts, and you'll want a Cellphone Jammer of your own!
Make: television Episode 10 goes live Saturday, March 7th at 7am cst. Check our listings page for broadcast times in your area.
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Jeff Simmermon says:
I've been performing at The Moth, a spoken word/storytelling non-profit with arms in NYC and LA. Essentially, folks perform a 5-minute story (without reading or notes) based on a theme. It's rated like figure-skating -- with teams of judges awarding scores like "9.5" or "8.0". They have the second-largest podcast on iTunes right now, too.So anyway -- in 2003, I met a woman online. She was from Western Australia, I was living in Richmond, VA. I ended up selling all my stuff and flying over there to meet her in person. Here's the story.
This looks like it could be fun/dangerous. It might be fun to set them up in a big field and let the kids roll wild. Maybe get access to a dead mall and roll away. Kid hamster ball soccer anyone?
Have you ever seen these things in the wild? Do you have pictures? What is the process for getting the kids into and out of the ball? How would you make the ball? Join us in the comments and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
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Plenty more photos here.
Alvin also let me know about two brand new very-limited hand-made book releases from BP:
Swipe File, by Charles Burns.
and
New Character Parade #2 by Johnny Ryan.
BB pal Steven "Invention of Air" Johnson sez, "thought you might want to link to the pretty funny interview I did on Colbert last night, including an excellent little exchange about an imaginary Founder Father named Robert Cornhole who should really have a Wikipedia page."
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 Blue whales are the planet’s largest creatures, yet we hardly ever see them. Their calls travel thousands of miles, but we can barely hear them. Now, National Geographic embarks on a mission to witness what nobody ever has in these waters; blue whales eating and giving birth. Click to Learn More natgeotv.com/bluewhale |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I hope you join us at BlogTalkRadio for our first Make: Talk call-in show. The call-in number is: (646) 915-8698
Circuit City is going out of business, very slowly it seems. Have they started turning off their light, one at a time? Or is it there's no money left for replacement bulbs? Is it a clever hack?
As seen in Boulder, Colorado last night.
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Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.
“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution
Derek Bledsoe, Boing Boing Video producer, is blogging daily Boing Boing Video episodes while Xeni's on the road in Africa.
Les Claypool apparently has an thing obsession with pigs.
Boing Boing Video cohort Matty Kirsch captures another interesting conversation with Les Claypool, now we explore the rock legend's preoccupation with swine, and the presence of porcine symbolism in his work.
Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.
The Mayor of Mount Holly turned me on to these surreal music videos from the Uncharted Zone's YouTube Channel. Songs by amateur singer-songwriters include "Gray Days," "Will I Ever Get Out of Debt?" "My Parachute Won't Open," "Charlie's Shoes."
The spirit of these singer/songwriters coupled with the video handiwork of Phil Thomas Katt has totally motivated me to spend the next week indulging myself and introducing you to the world of Song Poem Music. Stay tuned!Some of the tunes are quite catchy!
To celebrate 60 days of web traffic on their site, open source kit makers Oomlout created a tangible graph using an acrylic base, hook-up wire, their automatic wire cutter, and some Arduino code. We'd like to think we had something to do with those long wires.
More:
In the Maker Shed:
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PMA 2009: Sony has today announced a superzoom compact featuring the company's newly-developed high-speed 9 Mp Exmor CMOS sensor. Sporting a 28-480mm (35mm-equivalent) 20x zoom lens, the DSC-HX1 is capable of up to 10 frames per second in burst mode using a high-speed mechanical shutter. The new sensor also enables high definition movie capture up to 1080/30p, with sound captured by a built-in stereo microphone. The specification is rounded off by 'Optical Steady Shot' image stabilization, a 3" LCD, an ISO range up to 3200 and a wide array of scene modes and face detection options. There's also an interesting 'sweep panorama' mode which automatically stitches multiple frames in-camera to give one ultra-wide view.
I really like the tones this DIY pipe organ is able to produce. I would love to see this adapted to an Arduino or other micro-controller so it could play by itself. Then again, I would like to see almost anything automated with a micro-controller! Hopefully this will eventually be turned into a full instructable in the near future.
A homemade choir organ and pedalboard with a compass of one chromatic octave (C 4' to 2'). Built during Christmas break, this organ first became remotely playable on Christmas morning, 2008; it formally debuted that night when it was used to accompany Christmas carols.
More about DIY Pipe Organ
In the Maker Shed:
The Best of Instructables Volume I
The mystery has spurred its share of conspiracy theories. On the Sentinel Web site, readers comments suggested the boom was E.T.'s return, an intercontinental missile that North Korea, or test runs of new, secret U.S. Navy jets."Sonic boom remains a mystery"
"It was a chemtrail weather modification program jet making rain for you," a reader going by the handle "sameold" wrote.
"The easiest answer is probably right. I'm going with aliens," commenter "jarbee" wrote.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Blue whales are the planet’s largest creatures, yet we hardly ever see them. Their calls travel thousands of miles, but we can barely hear them. Now, National Geographic embarks on a mission to witness what nobody ever has in these waters; blue whales eating and giving birth. Click to Learn More natgeotv.com/bluewhale |
One of the best sessions I attended at last weekend's Convention on Modern Liberty was the panel on children's rights, mostly because of the fantastic presentation from Samantha Dimmock from the Children's Rights Alliance for England, in which she delivered the findings in a new report called "Another Perspective: How Journalists Can Promote Children's Human Rights and Equality." This is a really meaty study on the systematic vilification of children in the English press, and the effect that this has on public opinion. It includes recommendations for journalists who cover children's issues, and is endorsed by the National Union of Journalists.
Another perspective: How journalists can
promote children’s
human rights and
equality
(PDF)
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New from Sparkfun Electronics is the LilyPad protoboard, a way to easily whip up your own sewable electronics. Available in two sizes.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Wearables | Digg this!This is a large board for prototyping through hole components with the LilyPad system. There are an array of pins all shorted together with 10mil traces. This allows for quick and easy prototyping - all you have to do is cut the traces between holes you don't want connected! Standard 0.1" array. Check rear photo for trace configuration.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
KZ Xtreme Defense Pen (via Schneier)
# 6061 Aircraft Grade Aluminum
# CNC Machined.
# Type II Class 3 Hard Anodized
. # Ergonomic Design Provides Superior Grip and Comfortable Texturing.
# Threaded Cap.
# Slip Free, Knurled Center.
# Heavy Duty, 1/16 Inch Stainless Steel Heat Treated Pocket Clip
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USB cow with furry tentacle legs
Oh Gizmo's Evan Ackerman plugged four USB Cat Tails into the USB Cow Hub. This cuddly abomination--which has 8GB of storage--is the result.
According to Yeni, these scrumptious Obama snacks were banned in Indonesia because they were marketed without an expiry date. Silly Indonesians! Everyone knows that Obama expires on Nov 4, 2016!
YLKI Minta BB POM Bandung Segera Tarik Snack Obama
(Thanks, Yeni!)
Using an Arduino, thermistor, and a bit of software, Peter built a temperature sensor capable of reporting readings via Gmail, or even speech -
After recently getting my hands on an Arduino Duemilanove, I came across this Sketch on Arduino Playground that allowed an Arduino to function as a temperature measuring device with the addition of a few cheap and easily obtainable components.Hmmm … this could come in quite handy for monitoring mission-critical refrigeration among other things. In addition to the "Ardthermo" code, the project requires a Python install configured with a few specific modules. Check the site for thorough tutorial with Linux-oriented software specifics Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!Deciding to take things a step further, I wrote a Python script to create a DIY temperature measuring device that could be used both locally, via the command line, as well as remotely, using a googlemail account to check the temperature of a room. You can grab a copy of this script, called “Ardthermo”, from the Software page.
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With this easy-to-make hot wire foam cutter, you can reuse leftover Styrofoam to create treasures from trash!
Thanks go to Bob Knetzger for the original article in Make: Volume 16.
To download The 5-Minute Foam Factory MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete 5-Minute Foam Factory article in MAKE, Volume 16 "5-Minute Foam Factory"
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.
Earning high marks for its cuteness factor + good intentions, we find the unusually convenient breadcrumb bird feeder. Certainly easier access for the feathered consumers out there - I'm guessing permanent setup & operation may prove somewhat problematic. As Arwen @ CRAFT points out, this idea could easily be adapted to gather vegetable scraps for composting.
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With this easy-to-make hot wire foam cutter, you can reuse leftover Styrofoam to create treasures from trash!
Thanks go to Bob Knetzger for the original article in MAKE, Volume 16.
View the PDF of this project and then pick up MAKE, Volume 16 here for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.
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Our pal Bonnie Burton, from The Official Star Wars Blog, caught up with some of the members of Astromech, the R2-D2 builders club, at WorldCon, and asked them a few questions about the ins and outs of droid construction.
Can you describe what the R2-D2 Builders group is all about We're a loosely organized international group of fans who love to build droids and share them with the world. Founded in 1999, the club has continually striven to develop resources to allow others to accurately reproduce their own astromech droids. We know have almost 8,000 members, but I would say there's closer to 500 active builders at any one time. We make all sort of astromechs, not just R2-D2, but that's were our roots are. Some of you may have also seen R2-KT (R2KT.com); she was build by members of the club.
What tips did you give would-be builders at your WonderCon panel?
The four top tips are always -- planning, patients, do lots of research, and know your limitations. Without following these basic tips you can quickly make some expensive mistakes. Oh! And the fifth tip -- Don't try stuffing the electronics from a Hasbro Interactive Droid in a life-size Artoo. You don't want a 200 lb droid running you over.
More:
Building clubs for your favorite movie and TV robots
CDM points out this interesting demo of a tangible tracking system using Trackmate software -
Trackmate is an open source initiative to create an inexpensive, do-it-yourself tangible tracking system. The Trackmate Tracker allows any computer to recognize tagged objects and their corresponding position, rotation, and color information when placed on a surface. Trackmate sends all object data via LusidOSC (a protocol layer for unique spatial input devices), allowing any LusidOSC-based application to work with the system.Seems like a simpler alternative to the Reactable software - and tutorials are already available for building your own interface surface. Looks like fun … might just have to give this one a try myself. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!
Two months after the SD Association announced the new SDXC (extended capacity) format, Pretec has unveiled the world's first SDXC card with a capacity of 32 GB and read/write speed of 50MB/s. Future generations of these cards promise up to 2 Terabytes (2048 GB) of storage capacity and speeds of up to 300MB/s. Currently there are no products compatible with these memory cards.
Pretec has unveiled the world's first 666x Compact Flash cards with a read/write speed of 100MB/s. According to the company, this is approaching the format's maximum theoretical speed of 133MB/s, and the end of ever-increasing CF card speeds is now in sight. Sporting a rugged body and resistant to shock and impact, they promise to be ten times more durable that other CF cards. The 666x CF cards will start shipping from April, with capacities ranging from 4GB to 64GB.
This German hacker created a desktop VR rig with 6DOF (degrees of freedom) tracking, using two Wiimotes and a stereo monitor. I like when he put the glasses on and then says: "Don't laugh. This is serious cutting-edge technology." (I laughed anyway.)
Three of the four LEDs are aligned in a line with only slightly different height. The fourth LED is mounted above the line with more height. This special order of the lights is needed by the algorithm to be able to assign the IR-points recognized by the Wiimote to the original LEDs of the beacon. It is also important that the fourth LED has not the same height, so that the LEDs are not so planar. Please see picture 4 for a schematic layout of the beacon. For power supply I just us on AAA battery and connect all LEDs in parallel to the battery poles. For easy handling I use a battery holder which are also available at electronic components supply stores.
VRHome [via Hack a Wii]
Instructables member nickademuss shows us how to make an RC plane with an 8 foot wingspan out of corrugated plastic and a 25cc Weed Wacker engine.
I love Radio controlled airplanes and have built several kinds from balsa to this large scale plastic one. This one is made from $25.00 worth of plastic I bought locally at a sign company. The plastic is Coroplast or corrugated plastic, its cheap and builds fast. You could also use old election signs, you just need to paint them or make a patchwork airplane. Total cost with radio and motor was around 350 bucks.
Anyone have any post-election yard signs lying about?
8 Ft Wingspan Coroplast RC Piper Cub flown by 25cc Weed Wacker Motor
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Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
Blue whales are the planet’s largest creatures, yet we hardly ever see them. Their calls travel thousands of miles, but we can barely hear them. Now, National Geographic embarks on a mission to witness what nobody ever has in these waters; blue whales eating and giving birth. Click to Learn More natgeotv.com/bluewhale |
Mr. Green is an Arduino based robot built from a lot of scavenged parts, including old CD's, a mint tin, and some cardboard. I really like the magnetic on/off switch and the custom wheels. Check out the link for a lot more detailed pictures of the robot.
Mr.Green (aka Bean) Arduino based Robot - explore/avoid obstacles with Behavioral patterns (to bring a bit of Soul). Hopefully a new generation of Bots that need therapy
More about Mr. Green: An Arduino robot
In the Maker Shed:
Make: Arduino
Photo credit: itestro
Peer production occurs when communities of volunteers create open content that is meant to be usable, shareable, and freely redistributable by everybody.
Though this approach has proven to work great on the Web (think of Linux), is peer production ready to subvert the economic models of the physical world?
The capitalistic-based market, which is the economic system where you and I live and work inside, works pretty much this way: "Means of production are privately owned, corporations are internally organized as hierarchies, and resources are allocated through the signals that are given through market prices. If the profit is interesting enough, corporations will allocate resources in that direction and pay the necessary staff."Peer production instead, promotes a different system based on open knowledge, software and design communities. Members are first-hand connected with production companies, and fund their members directly. But not only. Companies indirectly support the infrastructure of cooperation of the commons on which they depend, sharing back the benefits with the open design communities. For an in-depth view of P2P-based, peer production, and how open communities and open design work, follow Michel Bauwens, the world P2P evangelist inside this explanatory article and decide for yourself whether this an emerging reality or just a dream. Here all the details:
Before the advent of the internet as a tool that can now be used by at least one billion humans, there were already three ways to conceive of production.
Peer production however is a genuinely new form of production, which is based on what I call permission-less self-aggregation around the creation of common value. It can be divided in three distinct processes:
Pre-capitalist modes were essentially coercive (slavery, serfdom, etc…), therefore requiring an expensive apparatus of coercion. Such fear-driven processes were very detrimental to motivation and innovation, breeding fatalism as a general attitude in such civilizations.
Capitalism on the other hand, based on self-interest and the exchange of equal value, creates a positive external motivation based on the expected return. However, in terms of motivation, it is absent when such return is not available. Innovation in a for-profit driven system can only be relative, based on the need to outcompete rivals, but staggers as soon as a monopoly situation is achieved. Finally, actors in the market look only at their own interest, and are structurally unable to take into account external factors.
In other words, the aim of the market is not to innovate per se, nor to make a good or best product, and in fact much energy in corporations is devoted to make their products sub-optimal. For example, typical for closed source or proprietary software is that you are prohibited from improving the product!!
The contrast with the dynamics of peer production could not be greater. It is based on passionate individuals, and open communities strive for absolute quality and innovation, not just relative quality or innovation. The aim of the Firefox browser for example, is to make the best possible browser on an ongoing basis, and because it is non-proprietary, it allows anyone to improve it through a great variety of plug-ins.
In practice however, most peer production allies itself with an ecology of businesses. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case. Even at very low cost, communities need a basic infrastructure that needs to be funded. Second, though such communities are sustainable as long as they gain new members to compensate the loss of existing contributors; freely contributing to a common project is not sustainable in the long term.
In practice, most peer projects follow a 1-10-99 rule, with a one percent consisting of very committed core individuals. If such a core cannot get funded for its work, the project may not survive. At the very least, such individuals must be able to move back and forth from the commons to the market and back again, if their engagement is to be sustainable.
Peer participating individuals can be paid for their work on developing the first iteration of knowledge or software, to respond to a private corporate need, even though their resulting work will be added to the common pool. Finally, even on the basis of a freely available commons, many added value services can be added, that can be sold in the market. On this basis, cooperative ecologies are created.
Typical in the open source field for example, is that such companies use a dual licensing strategy. Apart from providing derivative services such as training, consulting, integration etc., they usually offer an improved professional version with certain extra features, that are not available to non-paying customers.
The rule here is that one percent of the customers pay for the availability of 99% of the common pool. Such model also consists of what is called benefit sharing practices, in which open source companies contribute to the general infrastructure of cooperation of the respective peer communities.
Now we know that the world of free software has created a viable economy of open source software companies, and the next important question becomes: Can this model be exported, wholesale or with adaptations, to the production of physical goods?
"The Bug is a general-purpose Linux computer designed and manufactured by Bug Labs. A completely open hardware, it can be customized with different additional modules (GPS, camera, Wi-Fi adapter, USB, etc.)" (Source: TechCrunch)
The general rule to understand these dynamics and the separation between the immaterial and material world is the following:
For any immaterial project, as long as there is a general infrastructure for the cooperation, and open and free in-put that is available or can be created, then knowledge workers can work together on a common project.
However, to produce physical goods, there are inevitable costs of getting the capital together, and there needs at least to be cost recovery. Indeed such goods are by definition rival, i.e. if they are in possession of one individual, they are more difficult to share, and also, once used up, they have to be replenished.
Because of this essential difference, we can easily see that the same process cannot be used for both aspects of production of material things.
Nevertheless, and this is a key argument: anything that needs to be produced, first needs to be designed.
And designing a physical object, whether it is a car, a solar roof or a circuit board, is an immaterial software-based process depending on collaborating brains.
So the first thing that comes to mind is a collaboration between open design communities on the one hand, and producing factories on the other hand. This is indeed what is happening and emerging on a global scale.
Eric von Hippel, in his landmark book on The Democratization of Innovation has documented massive levels of such cooperation, at many levels in the industrial world, and with some sectors, like extreme sports, mostly consisting of voluntary tinkerers associated with production workshops.
Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that there are much greater difficulties to achieve this.
Manufacturing is indeed subject to the same process of miniaturization that computers once were. Consider the following underlying trends:
Mail-order machining means that you can design your own product, and a company will then deliver the item at your doorstep (spreadshirt, threadless). Desktop manufacturing means that you can design your own product, but also basically produce it yourself. This is already possible because of developments in 3D printing, whereby plastic designs can be produced with cheaper and cheaper machines.
Industry itself is increasingly using rapid and flexible manufacturing techniques, which require a fundamentally new philosophy concerning machines: not so much hyper-specialized, hyper-expensive and needing centralization, but rather conceiving as production through a universal machine that can be adapted quickly and inexpensively to new needs and processes. As such machines become smaller, more distributed and cheaper, then their available for more local production will increase dramatically.
Personal fabrication, as being developed through the FabLab communities and the RepRap, is the culmination of such a process.
We see the same innovation in financial capital. After the Peak Debt breakdown, we see a strong push to make finance more available in a distributed fashion.
One of the trends is of course social lending, allowing individuals to lend to each other. Another is a strong revival of complementary currencies based on mutual credit. The advantage is that credit is created through the participants themselves, without having to depend on the more scarce official money, and that an independence is achieved from centralized banks. Complementary currencies are also known to keep more of the financial flow within local communities.
So the new picture becomes clearer: cheaper production tools, coupled with peer-to-peer financing and peer-to-peer money, allows us to conceive of physical production as occurring much closer to the point of need. Such potential re-localization is not regressive however, but high-tech, and does not create isolation, because it is equally dependent on global tinkering and open design communities that operate on the scale of the world.
So the vision becomes clearer. We already have a peer-to-peer technological and media infrastructure, and we have new organizational models based on open collaboration regarding know-ledge, software, and design. We have increasing access to more distributed machinery allowing us to conceive of more localized production of such open designs. We have much lower capital requirements, but when we do need capital for cost-recovery of physical production, we have access to much more distributed capital through mutual credit and social lending.
None of these trends is fully realized, but, though they can be conceivably derailed, there is very strong evidence that they are moving and evolving in that direction.
What else do we need? Well, the missing piece is not difficult to guess, it’s a distributed P2P Energy Grid!!
The rationale for distributing energy is pretty straightforward since allowing people the tools to generate renewable energy also means an independence from centralized utilities and to sustain more localized production, which is the important aspect in the context of this article.
Excess energy can be given, traded or sold, having the additional benefit that those of us who use demonstrably less energy will receive an income from those that use an excess of energy.
Michel Bauwens (1958) is a Belgian integral philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist. He has worked as an internet consultant, information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave.
To know more you can visit these sections of the P2P Foundation wiki:
Photo credit: itestro
Peer production occurs when communities of volunteers create open content that is meant to be usable, shareable, and freely redistributable by everybody.
Though this approach has proven to work great on the Web (think of Linux), is peer production ready to subvert the economic models of the physical world?
The capitalistic-based market, which is the economic system where you and I live and work inside, works pretty much this way: "Means of production are privately owned, corporations are internally organized as hierarchies, and resources are allocated through the signals that are given through market prices. If the profit is interesting enough, corporations will allocate resources in that direction and pay the necessary staff."Peer production instead, promotes a different system based on open knowledge, software and design communities. Members are first-hand connected with production companies, and fund their members directly. But not only. Companies indirectly support the infrastructure of cooperation of the commons on which they depend, sharing back the benefits with the open design communities. For an in-depth view of P2P-based, peer production, and how open communities and open design work, follow Michel Bauwens, the world P2P evangelist inside this explanatory article and decide for yourself whether this an emerging reality or just a dream. Here all the details:
Before the advent of the internet as a tool that can now be used by at least one billion humans, there were already three ways to conceive of production.
Peer production however is a genuinely new form of production, which is based on what I call permission-less self-aggregation around the creation of common value. It can be divided in three distinct processes:
Pre-capitalist modes were essentially coercive (slavery, serfdom, etc…), therefore requiring an expensive apparatus of coercion. Such fear-driven processes were very detrimental to motivation and innovation, breeding fatalism as a general attitude in such civilizations.
Capitalism on the other hand, based on self-interest and the exchange of equal value, creates a positive external motivation based on the expected return. However, in terms of motivation, it is absent when such return is not available. Innovation in a for-profit driven system can only be relative, based on the need to outcompete rivals, but staggers as soon as a monopoly situation is achieved. Finally, actors in the market look only at their own interest, and are structurally unable to take into account external factors.
In other words, the aim of the market is not to innovate per se, nor to make a good or best product, and in fact much energy in corporations is devoted to make their products sub-optimal. For example, typical for closed source or proprietary software is that you are prohibited from improving the product!!
The contrast with the dynamics of peer production could not be greater. It is based on passionate individuals, and open communities strive for absolute quality and innovation, not just relative quality or innovation. The aim of the Firefox browser for example, is to make the best possible browser on an ongoing basis, and because it is non-proprietary, it allows anyone to improve it through a great variety of plug-ins.
In practice however, most peer production allies itself with an ecology of businesses. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case. Even at very low cost, communities need a basic infrastructure that needs to be funded. Second, though such communities are sustainable as long as they gain new members to compensate the loss of existing contributors; freely contributing to a common project is not sustainable in the long term.
In practice, most peer projects follow a 1-10-99 rule, with a one percent consisting of very committed core individuals. If such a core cannot get funded for its work, the project may not survive. At the very least, such individuals must be able to move back and forth from the commons to the market and back again, if their engagement is to be sustainable.
Peer participating individuals can be paid for their work on developing the first iteration of knowledge or software, to respond to a private corporate need, even though their resulting work will be added to the common pool. Finally, even on the basis of a freely available commons, many added value services can be added, that can be sold in the market. On this basis, cooperative ecologies are created.
Typical in the open source field for example, is that such companies use a dual licensing strategy. Apart from providing derivative services such as training, consulting, integration etc., they usually offer an improved professional version with certain extra features, that are not available to non-paying customers.
The rule here is that one percent of the customers pay for the availability of 99% of the common pool. Such model also consists of what is called benefit sharing practices, in which open source companies contribute to the general infrastructure of cooperation of the respective peer communities.
Now we know that the world of free software has created a viable economy of open source software companies, and the next important question becomes: Can this model be exported, wholesale or with adaptations, to the production of physical goods?
"The Bug is a general-purpose Linux computer designed and manufactured by Bug Labs. A completely open hardware, it can be customized with different additional modules (GPS, camera, Wi-Fi adapter, USB, etc.)" (Source: TechCrunch)
The general rule to understand these dynamics and the separation between the immaterial and material world is the following:
For any immaterial project, as long as there is a general infrastructure for the cooperation, and open and free in-put that is available or can be created, then knowledge workers can work together on a common project.
However, to produce physical goods, there are inevitable costs of getting the capital together, and there needs at least to be cost recovery. Indeed such goods are by definition rival, i.e. if they are in possession of one individual, they are more difficult to share, and also, once used up, they have to be replenished.
Because of this essential difference, we can easily see that the same process cannot be used for both aspects of production of material things.
Nevertheless, and this is a key argument: anything that needs to be produced, first needs to be designed.
And designing a physical object, whether it is a car, a solar roof or a circuit board, is an immaterial software-based process depending on collaborating brains.
So the first thing that comes to mind is a collaboration between open design communities on the one hand, and producing factories on the other hand. This is indeed what is happening and emerging on a global scale.
Eric von Hippel, in his landmark book on The Democratization of Innovation has documented massive levels of such cooperation, at many levels in the industrial world, and with some sectors, like extreme sports, mostly consisting of voluntary tinkerers associated with production workshops.
Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that there are much greater difficulties to achieve this.
Manufacturing is indeed subject to the same process of miniaturization that computers once were. Consider the following underlying trends:
Mail-order machining means that you can design your own product, and a company will then deliver the item at your doorstep (spreadshirt, threadless). Desktop manufacturing means that you can design your own product, but also basically produce it yourself. This is already possible because of developments in 3D printing, whereby plastic designs can be produced with cheaper and cheaper machines.
Industry itself is increasingly using rapid and flexible manufacturing techniques, which require a fundamentally new philosophy concerning machines: not so much hyper-specialized, hyper-expensive and needing centralization, but rather conceiving as production through a universal machine that can be adapted quickly and inexpensively to new needs and processes. As such machines become smaller, more distributed and cheaper, then their available for more local production will increase dramatically.
Personal fabrication, as being developed through the FabLab communities and the RepRap, is the culmination of such a process.
We see the same innovation in financial capital. After the Peak Debt breakdown, we see a strong push to make finance more available in a distributed fashion.
One of the trends is of course social lending, allowing individuals to lend to each other. Another is a strong revival of complementary currencies based on mutual credit. The advantage is that credit is created through the participants themselves, without having to depend on the more scarce official money, and that an independence is achieved from centralized banks. Complementary currencies are also known to keep more of the financial flow within local communities.
So the new picture becomes clearer: cheaper production tools, coupled with peer-to-peer financing and peer-to-peer money, allows us to conceive of physical production as occurring much closer to the point of need. Such potential re-localization is not regressive however, but high-tech, and does not create isolation, because it is equally dependent on global tinkering and open design communities that operate on the scale of the world.
So the vision becomes clearer. We already have a peer-to-peer technological and media infrastructure, and we have new organizational models based on open collaboration regarding know-ledge, software, and design. We have increasing access to more distributed machinery allowing us to conceive of more localized production of such open designs. We have much lower capital requirements, but when we do need capital for cost-recovery of physical production, we have access to much more distributed capital through mutual credit and social lending.
None of these trends is fully realized, but, though they can be conceivably derailed, there is very strong evidence that they are moving and evolving in that direction.
What else do we need? Well, the missing piece is not difficult to guess, it’s a distributed P2P Energy Grid!!
The rationale for distributing energy is pretty straightforward since allowing people the tools to generate renewable energy also means an independence from centralized utilities and to sustain more localized production, which is the important aspect in the context of this article.
Excess energy can be given, traded or sold, having the additional benefit that those of us who use demonstrably less energy will receive an income from those that use an excess of energy.
Michel Bauwens (1958) is a Belgian integral philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist. He has worked as an internet consultant, information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave.
To know more you can visit these sections of the P2P Foundation wiki:
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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Segal said such postings say nothing about what should really matter to patients — a doctor's medical skills — and privacy laws and medical ethics prevent leave doctors powerless to do anything it.Docs seek gag orders to stop patients' reviews (via Futurismic)His company, Medical Justice, is based in Greensboro, N.C. For a fee, it provides doctors with a standardized waiver agreement. Patients who sign agree not to post online comments about the doctor, "his expertise and/or treatment."
"Published comments on Web pages, blogs and/or mass correspondence, however well intended, could severely damage physician's practice," according to suggested wording the company provides.
Segal's company advises doctors to have all patients sign the agreements. If a new patient refuses, the doctor might suggest finding another doctor. Segal said he knows of no cases where longtime patients have been turned away for not signing the waivers.
Doctors are notified when a negative rating appears on a Web site, and, if the author's name is known, physicians can use the signed waivers to get the sites to remove offending opinion.
His Majesty's Dragon now available online!So I am very very happy to announce that my publishers have gotten onto the pixel-stained technopeasant bandwagon, and you can now find His Majesty's Dragon available as a free download at Del Rey's brand-new Suvudu Free Library, along with many other fine works including Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, Settling Accounts: Return Engagement by Harry Turtledove, and Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt. \o/
Her Majesty's Dragon on Amazon
Arwen @ CRAFT writes:
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Green | Digg this!A friend just gave me an asparagus crown (the network of roots that supports an asparagus plant), so I figured I'd better figure out how to plant it! Unlike many garden vegetables, asparagus are a long-term investment; you aren't supposed to harvest the asparagus for the first few years, to give the plant time to store as much energy as possible, and plants can survive for well over fifteen years! Most of the instructions I found online involve digging a trench for multiple plants in a proper vegetable garden. I'm a city girl with a container garden on my deck, but I'm hoping that a single plant will survive for a year or two in a big pot until I can transfer it to a bed in a backyard or community garden. By then it may even be time to harvest! Here are the step-by-step instructions I found from various tutorials online, adapted somewhat for a 15" pot.
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AS220 Labs is extending its popular Make and Break series of workshops into a special edition just for teens at the Cranston (Rhode Island) Public Library:
When: Tuesday, March 10, 4 - 6 pmWhere: Cranston Public Library, 140 Sockanosset Cross Road
Teens! Do you like to tinker? Come join us at the Cranston Public Library for Make and Break: Build a 555 Noisekit! - a workshop designed to inspire you to further investigate electronics technology and technology-based scientific inquiry. An instructor from AS220 Labs will show you how to use an old reliable integrated circuit - the 555 timer - to produce electrifying noisemusik. You will leave with a completed project that that can be plugged into any amplifier, computer speaker, or home stereo. All soldering tools and materials will be provided free of charge.
This program is funded by a YALSA Teen Tech Week Mini Grant!
To register, call 401 943-9080 x 5
Make and Break at Cranston Public Library: Build a Noisekit! - AS220 Labs
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Blue whales are the planet’s largest creatures, yet we hardly ever see them. Their calls travel thousands of miles, but we can barely hear them. Now, National Geographic embarks on a mission to witness what nobody ever has in these waters; blue whales eating and giving birth. Click to Learn More natgeotv.com/bluewhale |
Way back in MAKE Volume 01, we ran a Made on Earth feature on Kaden Harris and his awesome desktop creations. Shown below, at left, is the 18-inch floating-arm trebuchet, and at right is the 17-inch guillotine.
In 2007, he wrote a Make: Projects book called Eccentric Cubicle, an entire volume of "office accessories from a parallel universe." Never again does your desk job have to be dull with, say, a BallistaMail "projectile-to-peer intercubicle messaging" device at your disposal:
We checked in with Kaden this week to see what eccentric creations he's been wizarding lately. This is what he wrote:
"I'm building physically larger pieces. Currently I'm working on a Babbage gamelan mechanism for an exceptionally forward-thinking Nashville sessions pianist, and doing final finishing on an insanely complicated front door for a guy's house in San Jose.
Once those are out the door I have a backlog of odd mechanisms that have been sitting in a folder in R&D for at least 2 years. They need to exist, so that's the next objective. Most of the stuff waiting on the shelf is musical in nature, either electromechanical instruments and controllers or physical audio processors and effects. This is a pretty fortuitous state of affairs, cuz I'm playing in an extremely tech-intensive rawk band at the moment, which will be the perfect proving ground for the builds. Funny how life works out like that, innit?
Patti [Schiendelman] and I launched the Genteel Recessionista just a few weeks ago, and we've already coalesced a bright and active commenter community. We're trying to encourage people to get out of their caves and reconnect with their neighborhoods during the recession, because the strength and lore of a real live community is a powerful, powerful survival tool. Plus, someone usually has beer."
Thanks, Kaden — that is some seriously sound logic! Be sure to check out Kaden's many offerings at his site Eccentric Genius (which features a nice eye candy gallery of his creations) and the new Genteel Recessionista blog.
If you want to get eccentric in your cubicle, get your hands on Eccentric Cubicle in the Maker Shed!
Recently on Offworld, teenage superhero team The Superf*ckers dropped in to review Guerilla's just released PS3 shooter Killzone 2. The 'f*ckers are easily my favorite comic James Kochalka's ever done (just above this official Hulk comic), so I'm super happy to see them come aboard alongside his Monster Mii series.
Elsewhere, One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson turned briefly away from videogames to investigate Werewolf, or why playing games can give you hairy palms, and we looked at Computermusic4kids, a brilliant looking museum exhibit from Marieke Verbiesen that works as as both a history lesson and a baby's-first-chiptune-maker.
We also saw an original game coming from the team that ported Quake 3 to the iPhone, watched the nominees for scene.org's demoscene awards, confirmed that PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies will feature actual plants, and started drawing entries for their Peggle art contest.
Finally, we listened to Anamanaguchi's new 8-bit punk EP, drooled over the best Fallout 3 shirts ever made, wished more games came with a 'hug' button, geared up for The Beatles: Rock Band, geared up to torture ragdolls in a new iPhone game, and, wonderfully, saw that recently featured indie fave Jumpman will also be coming to Apple's device.
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Lately there have been some interesting technical discussions on FriendFeed that I'd like to connect with the technical people in the Scripting News community.
My friend Andy's literature blog recently pointed to this essay by Pat Holt, about how book publishers lose tons of money printing hardcover books. Publishers see them as expensive promotional copies that they need to print in order to get the reviews and interviews that sell profitable softcovers later.
But to use a trite formulation, publishers of hardcover books must realize that they aren't in the printing business, they're in the talking-stick business. We have a shared general public dialog, but because there are more people with things to say than the public has time to hear, we need some object to confer attention-- like the talking stick around a campfire. In our culture, this object is the hardcover from a major publisher, which ideally makes a single timely point to inject into the public discussion.
Here's something less expensive that I think could replace hardcovers. Each publishing house puts a video billboard in a protected, shared area of Times Square or similar that's dedicated to showing the authors/books currently being promoted. I know outdoor advertising in NYC is expensive, but one sign has got to be cheaper than thousands of hardcovers plus distribution. If the signs are properly imbued with significance, which the industry could easily do, they would accomplish everything that a hardcover run does.
The book industry would tell book reviewers, talent coordinators, etc. that the signs are the new hardcover. In other words, this is the pool of people we're putting out there to make the rounds in the media, and other people will be covering them and people will be thinking about them at the same time that you are. Meanwhile, aspiring authors should want to see themselves up on one of those signs. They should be framed with appropriate gravitas indicators (marble, columns) and designed by famous artists.
According to Pat Holt, publishers fear that reeducating the audience away from hardcovers is impossible. But I think it would happen quickly if all the major publishing houses unveiled their signs at once with some fanfare and ribbon-cutting. It would be a major cultural event, and would get plenty of free coverage.
The signs would also establish a site for publishers to compete against one another, telegraphing how well they are currently doing, by things like how big their sign is, how well-maintained, how state-of-the-art the display technology, and any other ways of showing off how much money the house can publicly burn on image.
