Basic Needs Construction Set

Introduction

The following are rough notes, meant to be refined over time.

The idea of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) has the potential to revolutionize society for the better, and a glimmer of that possibility was shown with the reception of Marcin Jakubowski's 2011 TED talk.

At the time of writing, more than 10 years have passed, and the ambition of the idea has yet to be realized.

Why is this?

Perhaps the idea is too ambitious and broad.

This article proposes to narrow the scope of the GVCS, in order to create a more tangible and realizable goal.

Thus, what is the "Basic Needs Construction Set"?

Four Basic Needs

The Basic Needs Construction Set (BNCS) is most easily introduced with two existing ideas:

1. The Global Village Construction Set
2. and Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Reader's of this article should be familiar with #1 already.

In #2, a prominent psychologist, Abraham Maslow, proposed a categorization of human needs, commonly portrayed as a pyramid.

The bottom-most layer of the pyramid represents physological needs such as food, water, energy, and shelter.

Maslow asserts that humans must have the needs in the bottom layers met before focusing on higher needs such as love and belonging.

The Basic Needs Construction Set is the set of machines which provide people their foure basic needs (in order of importance):

1. Water
2. Food
3. Shelter
4. and Energy

Goals

The goals of the Basic Needs Construction Set are not nearly as ambitious as the GVCS.

We only aim to produce the machines which provide these basic needs directly, rather than the machines which provide materials for building the machines.

For example, the Seed Home v2 would be a machine in the set, but if lumber is required, a Sawmill is not included in the set.

Thus, the Basic Needs Construction Set can be thought of as a subset of the GVCS prioritized by what is most important for human survival.

Is this prioritization of the GVCS useful?

If people have their four basic needs met, via machines in the set, then people can be freed to devote time towards developing other machines in the broader GVCS set.

Targeting either machines which are needed for machines in the BNCS, or machines that provide higher needs in the pyramid.

Some think that freedom of time to devote towards the GVCS should be solved through distributive enterprise, open-source product development, and entrepreneurship.

However, this path may not appeal to all.

Machines

Note, much of these machines revolve around a shelter, like the Seed Eco Home, which incorporates dedicated sub-systems for providing one of the four basic needs into an integrated whole.

• Water
  • Rain Water Harvesting System
  • Sea Water Desalinzation System
• Food
  • Aquaponics Greenhouse
• Shelter
  • Seed Eco Home
• Energy
  • Wind Turbine
  • Solar Panels & Photovoltaics
  • Biogas Digester

Deliverables

This work aims to have designs for all machines readily accessible via a web-browser with 3D visualization.

All designs would be available in open-source CAD software such as FreeCAD.

Software would be developed to support simulation and "What if ..." questions.

After the digital designs are sufficiently developed, a physical pilot site would be created to put the designs into practice.

Then a feedback loop with iteration between digital and physical development would be established.

A rough guess is that a core team of 3 - 8 people would be required for this effort, but Roles & Responsibilities would need to be identified.

Core Team Requirements

People have other needs besides the four basic ones outlined above, such as health care, communication, and transportation. All of which require money for things like doctor bills, a cell phone, and car.

The BNCS would only appeal to a rare set of pioneers which need very little (i.e. minimalists), or have their higher needs met via pre-saved capital, investments, passive income streams, contract work, and / or odd jobs. All of which would NOT demand the typical 40 hours people spend at their job, and free them to focus on this higher pursuit.

If a suitable pilot location site is chosen, then the need for things such as a car may be decreased.

Pilot Site Location

It makes the most sense to pick an already developed site which has some infrastructure already established.

Examples include Factor e Farm or an Ecovillage which is open to this sort of technolgical development.

The advantage of integrating into an existing Ecovillage community is that they're already familiar with living together in a community and resolving conflict.

Valuable skills needed for a team trying to achieve a goal like this.