Jesse

Hi Marcin,

I would like to begin by saying that I support what you are doing and believe in your general goals. However, I do have some advice/criticism.

In rhetoric and skills, the work you are doing differs from familiar "back to the land" movement projects, but it is difficult to see a significant difference in what you have actually done. Your main focus seems to have been (understandably) developing your own space and home and the tools that help you to do that. What I am waiting to see and would be more open to actively supporting is: actual open source hardware projects which means having detailed plans, instructions, documentation and a way for people to contribute on their own time; outreach to get people who need and want this technology started; a way that other people can benefit from your work in their own environment.

I realize that you are very much still in an experimental phase with what you are doing, so these things are probably just a bit out of your reach right now.

I am also slightly turned off by your by some of your rhetoric. Creating terms like "Factor 10 engineering" seems like a distraction. One, anything that you are buying from a large company is already at least 4-6 times more expensive than the production cost. Add this that you are making very trimmed down, simple designs on your own, and it is unsurprising that you achieve these costs. This is DIY.

I am wary of ideas like "buying out at the bottom". It seems like you advocate dropping out of society. I want to know how we build up society. How does this play out in an urban environment? I want to enrich my community, not leave it and go start a farm; how do I do that? Ultimately, you are only able to do what you do because of the historical steps our society has gone through, so do not marginalize yourself.

I think you should spend more time talking about what you have done and what people can do right now rather than talking about what you want to do. I see lot of trying to convince people of your ideas or outlining this "ecology" on your website. Saying things like "And we'll have cheap solar energy" sounds good, but it does not mean much. I have seen several people talk about building systems like the one you are planning, but you can not simply say "we'll have a good solution for storing energy" because you don't and it is not easy.

These are just some quick thoughts and could be articulated better. Please take this as helpful criticism and not an insult to your work at all. Best of luck to you.

-Jesse