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Introduction
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We may be at a turning point in humanity. There is a crisis of meaning. People are disconnected from nature or from raw survival by building things. With AI emerging as a potential threat - and promise - we take 2026 to attemp the OSE Model of Change. Our model is to train oodles of young people to be system transformers, veritable civilization systems engineers - using collaborative and open source methods. Many outdated institutions need updating, so we take this as a chance to do massively positive work with purpose. Some clear areas are solving meaning, housing, energy, manufacturing, environmental issues such as various extinctions, governance, and social justice issues.
We begin with topics such as housing, energy, agriculture, and manufacturing - absorbing the primary sector of the economy and working on collaborative methods to rebuild the world. We found a revenue model on hyper-efficient construction, so we are starting an induction where students build homes 2 days and spend the rest of the time learning how to transform the world. We are also developing a Degenerate kernel for modular technology, the Global Village Construction Set. To democratize design so that average people can design and build engineered technology - we are introducing the Iconic CAD Workflow - which leverages human language and AI to generate real design in FreeCAD - along with all the documentation to to make design replicable and contribution scalable.
GVCS
We are estimating an effort requirement of about 50000 hours to opensource and democratize each tool of the Global Village Construction Set, of which there are fifty. That is equivalent to the effort of about 24 people working full time for a year, or a team of 24 providing the leadership of a 1000 more participants remotely, who can collaborate in a tightly-coordinated, Time-Binding way. 1000 people collaborating would mean 50% efficiency or better - or about 2 hours of volunteer time per day. Our dashboard would thus show 2 dials - one for 1000 contributors remote, and one for the 24 - if the dial is cranked up, we have a full effort. In full throttle, the team leads to productization, and billions of dollars distributed as the market size of each of the fifty is at least $1B, for more than $10T total.
Extreme Collaboration Method
The extreme collaboration method involves BHAGs, such as opensourcing and thus distributing the wealth of entire sectors. Such as housing, or solar hydrogen, solar steel and concrete, windpower, and 3D printing. And many more. Total market size is 1/10 of the economy. Our further goal, once open collaboration is established, is to opensource the technosphere, a Knowledge Kernel that costs only $50B to release. The game is one not of technology, however, but of upgrading human minds into growth mindsets of abundance - with rigorous skills.
Applied Civilization Lab
We are starting on the next step of our journey. We already showed that open source, industrial productivity - can be achieved - on a small scale. See TED Talk. We showed that lifetime design is required for technology to serve humans, as opposed to being dependent and damaged when things break. See Viral Video. We sold our first house, for $212k, so we can make revenue happen. We showed radical swarm build efficiency, such as th Seed Eco-Home 1 build in 5 days - with 50 unskilled people. We have done some agriculture, from perennial polyculture Miracle Orchard to Afforestt to Nut Planting, and have understood that Crop Yields Per Acre can range anywhere from $200 to $40B. So we are now doing an experiment where we build a real experiment of model civilization, built around an education campus. That means we are building infrastructure, energy, agriculture, manufacturing, governance, finance, health, security, education and other systems that make society work. By starting with opening knowhow, and creating replicable blueprints - for a model civilization in paradise. Many civilization startup have occurred, but none we know of that are based on a core of opening the economy to global collaboration. Starting from basic tech, and moving up to advanced tech, including spaceships and microchips in later phases. For now, the experiment starts with a founding cohort of 24 people living on site, building an ideal society - but that really means becoming burdened with infinite power for unlimited responsibility. This is not a walk in the park. We aim to define a datapoint for human possibility - and publish all the progress while we are at it.
Documentation Discipline
We publish on social media, and document designs on the wiki. We follow a simple procedure where everyone keeps a Work Log to document their work, with typical development being a technology, enterprise, or institution of some sort - captured in the wiki Development Template that can be invoked with {{subst:dev+}}.
Key Economic Development Areas
Housing is an $11T global market, with $4T in residential alone. Opensourcing housing can make housing affordable, as major market control makes housing expensive [1]. To solve housing we propose the modular Seed Eco-Home, which can be reconfigured and redesigned for all types of size, shape, and performance - by average individuals using Iconic CAD. The end goal here is open design such that we catch up with all other animal species, which do not have a housing crisis outside of what humans may be causing.
Solar Hydrogen is a big one - hydrogen cracked from water by alkaline electrolysis - with payback times on the order of 4 months. This is a great study where growth of this could be extreme if distributed - as the total addressable market for fossil fuels, which hydrogen can replace - is about $6T. This could reduce resource conflict pressure worldwide, clean up the environment, and distribute 10% of global wealth. With housing, we could distribute 20% of all global wealth. The good thing about solar hydrogen is that the stack itself is $10k for 100kW - lends itself to non-hi tech manufacturing with off-the-shelf parts. The separator membranes are not exotic, unlike in more advanced proton exchange membrane electrolyzers - see Open Source Electrolyzer. The goal is to go off-grid for any new housing development by using Thermal Batteries and solar hydrogen. This means an effective ICE must be part of the equation.
Solar concrete is next. This builds infrastructure material from rock and solar electricity converted to resistive heat in Kanthal wire.
Dirt is next. Compressed Earth Blocks are still a great idea. Bulletproof and tornado proof, though if unstabilized, need to protect from rain.
From dirt comes food. Healthy food is a good idea, and growing it connects one to meaningful existence. So it is probably good if we grow at least some food ourselves.
Freedom is the Goal
Freedom is the goal, so we should realize what Sartre called the 'curse of freedom'. Freedom is infinite power of will, with which comes infinite responsibility. But freedom is not possible without appropriate technology, ie, technology which serves human needs, not that which make us dependent, disempowered, or controlled. Democracy is not possible without liberated technology - where anyone has access to powerful tools, and where anyone can design or build what they want.