Important Questions

Inspired by Richard Hamming's Talk on Doing First-Class Work, I thought, what are the important questions that I would like to provide tangible answers to in my lifetime? These are less scientific, but more social - questions. They are integrated systems thinking questions. The first one that comes to mind is How do we shift the paradigm of the economic system from proprietary to collaborative? From this stem derivative questions, like, What would the world look like if people had the courage to - truly - collaborate?. And, Can society transition to a higher plain of existence - away from consumerism - and into full self-determination - where there are many more powerful, enlightened people who are more close to our genius, expert generalist selves? Or, What would the world look like if more people achieve their true potential, when the duty of making a living is lifted by the appropriate use of technology that allows everyone to live easier lives and thereby prosper? Or, are we for ever doomed to a proprietary development, competitive waste, wartime economy - accompanied by destruction of people and the environment as we continue with a mindset of scarcity?

First we must admit that the description in the last sentence describes the economy well. It is nothing negative to one who is fully alive. It's an inspiration that we can make it different.

The Kardashev Scale implies that we can thrive - 10,000 times over. Surely we can use some excess energy to afforest the deserts to mitigate climate and rainfall, to educate everyone, and to transition to an economy of abundance. Ample energetic resources support the case for a different paradigm: of collaborative development for a transparent and inclusive economy of abundance. But today's mental models, mixed with the reptilian brain part of the human anatomy - keep us in fight mode and in scarcity thinking. I suggest starting with General Semantics - the seminal writing that tells us that The map is not the territory.

As such we are working on open-sourcing the critical tools for building infrastructures of the next economy - the open source economy. Solid financial feedback loops have been elusive at Open Source Ecology - as over the last decade - we focused on protyping, rather than productization. But all value is redeemed at the point of sale, in marketing speak - and an enterprise does not survive without product. So far, we have not been selling physical products as much as experiences - our Extreme Manufacturing workshops. This is consistent with the emerging Experience Economy. The important point is that to grow, and to put a dent in the universe - we must yet deliver the mass creation of right livelihood that we have long ago promised.

At present, our work on the Global Village Construction Set is expanding to STEAM Camps where we teach skills, while developing real products. Our model here is: gather an A-team of instructors to deliver world-class curriculum. Attract participants with immersion learning and practical products. If the revenue model works, then we will have created a way to fund on-going, open source product development. OSE does a 50/50 revenue share with the instructor for each event. The financial projections look like this:

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Is summary, the projections indicate that an instructor gets paid about $5-10k per event.