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=How would you describe the work of Open Source Ecology (OSE) in one sentence?=
OSE is working on the Global Village Construction Set ([[GVCS]]), an advanced, industrial economy-in-a-box that can be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world.
=How would you describe the practical motivation of your work in one sentence?=
The intent is removing material scarcity from being one of the most fundamental driving forces in human civilization.
=Why do you emphasize the importance of materials scarcity in modern civilization so much?=
According to The Green History of the World – human history, and in particular ecological history – has been marked by humans encountering lush forests and leaving behind deserts. The point is - humans burn quickly through their natural resource base, multiply rapidly, and then attack their neighbors once their own resources run out.  This story has not stopped. Today, empires continue their acquisitive behavior – and leave behind mass destruction. Imagine that now we could transcend this game – by using modern technology to convert sunlight to sustainable energy (solar, wind, biomass, water, others) to process the abundant “dirt and twigs” under our feet into the substance of modern civilization. By design, this will have eliminated the need for conflicts surrounding access to resources. The key to this transformation is open access to the enabling knowledge and knowhow - which pushes the frontiers of human technological capacity to the practical use of low-grade, abundant, local resources - creating harmony between man and nature as a result.
=What is the most important feature of OSE work?=
In a few words – it is the synergistic integration of design to enable the building of infrastructures on an unprecedented small scale.
The most important feature of the GVCS is its nature as an integrated tool-set or ecology of products that fit together like a Lego set or jigsaw puzzle for building real infrastructures of communities. Pieces of the GVCS build upon each other in a boot-strapping fashion, ie, when you have one tool, then you can build or work with the next, in a cyclic fashion. For example, once we can produce electricity, we can then run an induction furnace, which is in turn capable of producing metal that can be CNC machined to produce more devices that make electricity. The scope of the ecology of products is not only technology, but permaculture and agroecology – integrated, regenerative, natural ecologies that provide a wide array of products and raw materials. The scope of our work aims to push the limits of ecological transformation of materials heretofore implemented by humankind – by a completely ecological industrial cycle  – where even advanced materials borne by smelting rock are either recycled indefinitely or returned back to the earth. We are beginning to demonstrate that this can be done cost-effectively on an unprecedented small scale.
=Are you proposing that people limit their activity, downshift, and tread more lightly on the earth?=
Our aim is for people to upshift to a high standard of living without the compromises – by doing more with less – by using wisdom and technology – as humans that are more capable, powerful, and responsible than at any other time in history. There is no need to sacrifice, as resources used ever more wisely or cyclically can support everybody on this planet easily – without infringing on the needs of others or on the needs of nature.
=If you endorse high technology, does that not imply certain toxic or harmful industrial practices?=
Every industrial process can be upgraded to an environmentally benign, open source counterpart. That is the essence of our work. We are pursuing the complete closure of eco-industrial cycles, where there is no waste – like in nature, where there is abundance yet there is no waste. By gaining complete mastery over material transformation via open source knowledge and eco-industrial practice – it is possible to produce all the same services of the modern industrial economies, minus the  negative consequences. We are not calling for limiting the activity of people – but we are calling for replacing harmful practices with harmonious ones.
=Do you hope to compete with the modern industrial system?=
Evidence shows that we can do much better than the wasteful status quo. The question of societal well-being is not a matter of production – but a matter of distribution. When open source, distributive economics become wide-spread – not only will production become optimized based on a large number of criteria, but also its distribution will tend to benefit everybody.
=What makes you so sure that open source economics and products will surpass the performance of existing mainstream production?=
For one, Linux has already demonstrated that once an open source project gathers enough developers and supporters – the quality of its product surpasses that of its closed-source counterpart. This is the reason why a number of open source software solutions have taken over the majority market share compared to proprietary counterparts. Other open source hardware projects are beginning to demonstrate the same for physical products. Thus, it is only a matter of time before open hardware becomes the norm. This is inevitable because of the advent of the internet. People can now collaborate over the internet – not only in the design phase, but also in physical prototyping using shared design files with digital fabrication techniques.
=What is your proposed end state or vision?=
Our end state is a world where every community has access to an open source Fab Lab – which can not only produce all the things that one currently finds at a Walmart – but which can produce them cost-effectively, quickly, on-demand from local resources, including all the production tools in the Fab Lab itself. This would be a giant leap for distributive economics – where resource constraints no longer apply. People would then have a chance to shift a significant portion of their energy to interests beyond mere survival. The end state is super-skilled workers, free of control from remote power centers, as people in communities regain their power to thrive without strings attached to their happiness. The scope of production should span from foodstuffs, fuels, energy, and down to semiconductors and metals.
=What is the minimum size of a community that can attain absolute prosperity and autonomy?=
Our analysis indicates that about 200 people would suffice to produce all the items present in modern civilization, including semiconductor and microelectronics fabrication up to the level of 1990s technology. The analysis involves assessing the range of the various material and product needs of civilization, along with the labor/machine/skill requirements for each product.
=OSE is talking about ecological integrity and prosperity, but why do we hear so much about inevitable environmental destruction and die-off?=
Constant change is indeed happening, and without question, humans have caused much destruction to the planet and to each other. However, we don't believe that the public discourse is helping to provide solutions, because if they were – then the problems would have been fixed a long time ago. That is a politicized message used by the media to gather political support for various political schemes – for people to look to some leader for a solution. We are calling instead for people to look at themselves as the leader to break out of this cycle – by gaining increased awareness and responsibility for their global footprint. We don't like to use scare tactics – knowing that if humans disappeared from the face of the earth, nature would swallow up and overgrow the human presence within years – and things would be just fine. Or, if humans just wizened up a bit -  everything would also be fine. Our message is for everybody to take responsibility for the world around them. We  believe that energy is abundant, and we are nowhere near the earth's carrying capacity, and a full range of enabling technology can be created readily – so we are calling people out to take the personal responsibility to make a transition to sound living – where the dollars that we spend are not funding destruction. As a solution, we are simply promoting that people accept the principle of open source ecology – ie, taking full accountability for one's global footprint by learning to thrive in a modern lifestyle based on abundant, local resources – fueled by open knowledge and distributive economics.
=How can we hope for future prosperity if we are currently in an energy crisis?=
The energy crisis may be best described best as lack of awareness or commitment. Did you know that if we used commercially-proven techniques of generating electricity from the sun via solar concentrators with mirrors – then  only 0.3% of the land mass of the United States would be required to provide all of the electricity needs of the United States?  Anyone with technological literacy and a small amount of business sense will notice that this fact renders any notions of energy scarcity obsolete. Companies such as Ausra can implement solar concentrator electric systems cost-effectively in the Southwest of the US, on the scale of a power plant. Imagine if we were to open-source solar concentrator technology, to generate a typical cost reduction of 5- to 10-fold. Even a factor of 2 cost reduction would make this energy source cost-effective throughout most of North America, where there is correspondingly less sunlight. And, the cost reduction associated with open-sourcing of solar concentrator technology would make this technology feasible not only on the power plant scale, but also in the context of distributed power generation. This is one of our goals at OSE.
=Are you suggesting drastic cost reduction as a result of open-sourcing of hardware technologies?=
Drastic cost reduction is a well-known feature of open source products, where collaborative development eliminates various inefficiencies for the benefit of both the user and producer. We have demonstrated about a 5-fold reduction of cost over the competition with The Liberator – sale price of $8k vs $45k for the competition. The RepRap open source printer project has demonstrated a factor of at least 10, where prior to RepRap, one would have to pay $10k for a 3D printer. Similar trends are observed for many other open source variants of proprietary technologies.
=Why did you select 40 particular technologies, and is this list fixed?=
40 is a well-bounded yet sufficient number, selected explicitly based on its overall capacity to produce the infrastructure of advanced civilization – namely the food, energy, housing, and technology needs of people. We have chosen the set based entirely on proven technologies, requiring no new inventions, with the simplest possible instantiation that enables the creation of resilient communities with plenitude. We have selected these tools according to OSE Specifications. Since we are developing, testing, using, and dogfooding the tools as a real test of their effectiveness -– we may make substitutions based on new findings. The services provided by the tools are relatively fixed, while the implementation may vary, upon proof that a different choice indeed scores more favorably with respect to OSE Specifications as the metric.
=Are your technologies open source, and what does that mean according to OSE standards?=
Our technologies are open source in the traditional sense of open access to published blueprints (“source code”) for the technologies. The OSE definition also includes an open business model – namely, that we share the business model openly by documenting fabrication economics and ergonomics, sourcing information, economic analysis, and other details which help others to replicate a profitable enterprise.
=Are you not afraid of others stealing your ideas and business models?=
We believe that the more people who use and produce goods according to OSE Specifications, the better the world will be, and we want to help them succeed – especially if they contribute further product development back to the community. Even the work of those who acquire patents after building on our work are overall a positive contribution – since patents expire after some time. Regarding patents, we publish openly – so that it is not possible for someone else to prevent us from using our own designs, since all of our information is prior art that can therefore not be enclosed – as patents require originality.
=If you publish your business models openly and give your information away freely, how do you still maintain competitive advantage?=
We maintain collaborative advantage by means of our ethics, integrity, primacy, zero-waste policy, dogfooding, complete vertical integration, community-based operation structure, and constant evolution from contributions by the development community. We believe simply that the energy that our competitors spend on protectionism, and therefore their limited ability to collaborate openly, is a huge waste and liability. We, on the other hand, are free to contribute all of our energy to creative development. For this reason, we are not overly concerned about license violations against us or about policing – because we'd rather spend our time creating. Protectionism, policing, excessive structuring, and bureaucracy are forms of waste that we tend to avoid – based on our zero-waste policy of promoting post-scarcity economics.
=What are the basic productivity specifications for your tools?=
The open source tools must be competitive in productivity with their industry standard counterparts that are used to provide the same service to assure a high productivity-to-labor ratio – which is is a prerequisite for generating economic surplus. To give some round numbers, a one or two person operation producing lumber, fuel, metal, foodstuffs, or any other product should produce a minimum of $1k worth of product per day.
=If you are to compete with mainstream industry, wouldn't you have to make millions of dollars per day from a given operation?=
Large corporations have to make millions each day because their costs are also millions of dollars per day. Their net gain is much smaller. We do not have the same constraint if we are completely vertically integrated, literally from dirt to product – where we capture value from every single step of the production process.  Our capital costs are replaced by the cost labor used to produce goods from essentially free natural resources. Thus, under the assumption of negligible material costs, the value we keep is essentially the value that we produce. Simply put – when our costs are near zero, all of our earnings are profits – captured from the value of labor that we put in. Thus, earnings of $1k from  a micro-production enterprise translate to $50-100 per hour per person – which is a healthy wage for a skilled worker.
=Huh?=
Our economic model involves substitution of labor for materials, since the model involves that we produce our materials from natural resources, and these natural resources are free if they come from our premises. This assumes that we have the technical capacity to convert raw feedstocks to the high-value products – which is one of the basic goals of our experiment. We are in the initial stages of testing this hypothesis.
=You must be kidding. If you make all of your feedstocks from scratch, you will never be profitable, because that takes too much time and complexity, no?=
We have shown some calculations and have shown initial data that indicates that if we produce our own materials – then it will cost us about 30% less compared to buying those materials off-the-shelf. We've done this for the case of an induction furnace producing our own virgin steel from scrap compared to buying this steel from a vendor. See Technological Recursion - http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Technological_Recursion on the wiki. For us, this is a start, as we can go one level deeper to smelting metals from minerals – and we expect further cost reduction over off-the-shelf purchasing. The economics are even more favorable to us when we are using our own products, where we do not incur the costs of sales and marketing.
=Are you suggesting that it is more efficient for communities to produce their own goods than to work for someone else in order to be able to purchase the same goods from outside sources?=
Initial evidence tells us that this is indeed overwhelmingly true – by a factor of 5-10. The implications for liberation as a result of this are profound.
=Are you suggesting that every person in the community must do a wide array of tasks in order to provide such an economy?=
While the individuals in the community will not be specialists – they will be general specialists who participate in division of labor. If a community has a minimum of 200 people, there are many hands to divide the necessary tasks for thriving.
=Can you begin to break down the labor requirements for handling all the productivity of the initial GVCS 40 technology set?=
Assume a 20 person prototype community, prior to the creation of a 200 member one – as an example. One custom fabricator can produce for the community, and have ample time for market production of all the mechanical tools (covers 18 of them, including cars and bulldozers) – at about 40 hours of production per machine. Thus, one person could make the entire heavy equipment, agriculture, construction, and utility tools from open source plans. The total number of items may have to be 22 – say 5 cars, or one car per 4 people. One Builder/Architect would cover construction needs. One Engineer would cover the Solar Turbine, Steam Engine, Heat Exchanger, gasifier burner, and pellet production with the pelletizer (covers 23 of the tools now) – at the cost of no more than a month of labor per year. One agriculture person would cover orchard, garden, nursery, field crop, dairy, chicken, and bakery production (now 27 technologies)– at a 50% time requirement per year using mechanized agriculture for 20 people, year round. The next person is the digital craftsman – running the CNC torch table, lathe, mill, drill, ironworker, oxy-hydrogen cutter, 3D printer, and welder – (now having covered 35 technologies). This person could now make hydraulic motors (36 tools now) and steam engines, including replication of the tools themselves – starting from raw metal – at a cost of about 2 months of production time (about 1/6th of a full time commitment). The last person is the digital metalsmith – with the capacity to run an induction furnace, hot rolling of steel, moldless robotic arm casting, wire extrusion – the last of the set for a total of 40 tools – that enable production of virgin metal from scrap.
Here we have covered:
Custom fabrication for mechanical infrastructure
Agriculture – diverse array, complete, year-round diet provision.
Fuel/energy production – biomass pellets, evolving to solar turbine over 2 years
Construction – only first year for a few months, then expanding as needed.
Metal production – for high value earning in conjunction with CNC and custom fabber
CNC fabrication – precision work
These are merely 6 people to cover the food, energy, housing, fuel, and technology needs. We could still handle 14 more people in other trades, as all needs are already covered.
This entire package may be assessed more explicitly by breaking it down to the startup and running phases – where the above covers the intermediate running phase – where the community is beginning to stabilize, but further time optimizations may be possible via gaining further skills and via further automation. The assumption is that the limit of effective tool use is set by the engine horsepower available, and the land available determines the horsepower hours available on a sustainable basis. Since every acre yields about 500 gallon equivalent of diesel fuel from pelletized biomass – every acre brings in the equivalent of about  10,000 hp hours if every gallon is equivalent to about 20 hp hrs – or the work of about 100,000 slaves for one hour, or about 100 slaves for 125 work days – point being that one acre provides substantial energy crop.
=Is OSE interested in generating economic surplus via centralization of production?=
We are interested in economic surplus not via centralization, but via decentralized production that utilizes low-cost, flexibly-specialized machinery for diversified production on the scale of every community. Centralization has to date been accompanied by poor distribution of wealth, and our work aims to address this point.
=What is OSE's proposed scale of productive operations that you are proposing?=
EF Schumacher has explained clearly in his seminal book, Small Is Beautiful – that human enterprise  simply breaks down and economies become dysfunctional due to practical considerations after reaching a certain size limit. We see many examples of this today – manifesting as instabilities associated with megacorporations, burgeoning governments, and inflated financial institutions. We know that two workable solutions are either reducing the scale or getting better in management. OSE is focusing on designing and building functional communities beginning at the smallest scale of feasibility – as the simplest, practical experiment for proving our hypothesis. We believe that a modern, resilient community may be built with as few as 200 well-rounded, general specialists. Our prototype community experiment aims to demonstrate this point, and other implementations at other scales are encouraged in parallel.
=How far along are you in your work?=
We are mere babies, given that only The Liberator, or one of the 40 technologies of the GVCS has so far reached Full Product Release status. We have several other first and second prototypes built, with LifeTrac scheduled for Full Product Release on May 1, 2010. Other prototype include Power Cube I, II; Soil Pulverizer I, II; MicroTrac I; heavy duty drill press I; 150 ton hole puncher I; RepTab I, the CNC torch table; and Hexahatch I, II, the open source chicken incubator. The modern Steam Engine, heat exchanger, and burner Prototypes I are forthcoming by January, 2011. We have so far demonstrated cost-effective production on the scale of a small facility with basic tools – such as for  tractor production. Digital fabrication assist is our next step - to reduce costs further – for example with the CNC torch table for cutting tractor parts or CNC milling for producing hydrauilic motors. We have not begun on electronics production, nor the desktop semiconductor foundray, or the 2000 sq foot silicate foundry for producing metal – which are deeper phases of our work.
=Is the GVCS the final product of OSE work?=
There are 3 levels of the GVCS, each with a deeper level of technological complexity. The first is the 40 tools above. These are essentially complete products, produced by outside sourcing of components. GVCS II focuses on producing components. GVCS focuses on producing raw materials to produce the components. Each level goes deeper in its ability to utilize local materials in production – so that we end up with the capacity to make metals and semiconductors from local minarals – key ingredients of advanced civilization?
=Is your approach that of technological optimism accompanied by a technnological fix for everything?=
We like to see ourselves more as humanitarians who have recognized simply that material well-being is the foundation of any civilization, including that of a spiritually-advanced civilization. Since our work aims to eliminate material scarcity form being the dominant driving force of civilization dynamics -  we are aiming to lay a foundation for peoples' capacity to pursue their passions, while focusing less on their primal survival instincts. Technology is merely a tool to help accomplish these goals.
=What do you foresee as the deeper political effects of your work?=
It is generally accepted that governments as we know them – or entities dealing with collection and redistribution of resources at the cost of significant collateral damage – become obsolete with the advent of open source ecology. This is inevitable with the unleashed productivity of a distributive, collaborative, open source production model based on open and ubiquitous access to advanced, appropriate tools. We foresee an equal playing field of competent, well-organized, small-scale, decentralized republics after the borders of empires dissolve through a natural progress of evolution. This is true whether one lives in the first, second, third, or fourth worlds – as these distinctions likewise dissolve with open source ecology.
=What is your greatest challenge in completing the GVCS?=
We're basing our entire design on economically-proven technologies, so the challenge is not the technology itself. The challenge is human consciousness – the lack of awareness of the index of possibilities regarding a better future – which translates to a limited amount of support for our work. This is particularly exacerbated because most people are specialists - overspecialized and generally technologically-illiterate. The era of the integrated human and generalist has not yet arrived as the dominant paradigm – but this is likely to change due to increasing access to rapid, integrated learning opportunities.
=Does open source ecology provide any solutions to the various conflict hot-spots scattered throughout the globe?=
While armed conflicts are complex in their origin, they typically have at least some origin in the material security of the parties in question. On many occasions, population issues exacerbate such struggles. We see no other solutions than creating solid infrastructures within the afflicted areas whereby the sustainable, regenerative, equitable, and distributive use of abundant natural resources can happen – as enabled by universal access to modern material productivity. Population issues are addressed naturally via the open source ecology paradigm – ie, when communities rely on local resources for their survival, immediate feedback loops of regenerative resource use keep populations in balance with their natural life support systems. Thus, we believe that a paradigm of open source ecology cam start to chip away at permanent conflict at the very least – and at best, it can put a stop to it all together.
=What do you suggest as a progressive legal structure for OSE communities?=
We propose organization of OSE communities as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – and in particular – as private-contract, full-liability enterprise communities. We suggest that land holdings be orgnized as permanently evolving, preservation sites of human heritage. The purpose of these communities should be to serve as 1000 points of light across the globe that show a positive example of sound and fulfilling living. As such, we propose that these communities function as development facilities for helping their surrounding economies to transition to resilience. We further propose that as NGOs, OSE communities should act with full responsibility for their actions, and as such, should not seek limited liability or other means of outsourcing accountability to third parties.
=What are these 40 technologies in particular?=
The current list contains multipurpose machinery: (1) LifeTrac, the open source, multipurpose, 4 wheel drive hydraulic tractor; (2) MicroTrac, a smaller version of the above; (3) The Liberator – the automated, Compressed Earth Brick press that can press up to 16 bricks per minute; the automated dimensional (4) Sawmill for high-throughput; (5) Soil Pulverizer (flexible rototiller) for digging-pulverizing-loading soil for CEB construction, and for other agriculture duties; (6) Cement Mixer with automatic loading; (7) Well-Drilling Rig; (8) Univeral Auger – for drilling holes for posts, planting trees, and powering other rotors; (9) Agricultural Combine for harvesting and threshing crops; (10) Agricultural Spader for preparing soil; (11) Universal Seed Drill for planting seeds of all sizes. (12) Backhoe for digging; (13) Bulldozer for earthworks; (14) Baler for hay and straw crop; (15) Mower for clearing brush; (16) Trencher for laying underground wire; (17) Hammer Mill for shredding solids. Next comes transportation – (18) Open Source Car; (19) Hydraulic motors and pumps. Next is energy and fuel – (20) Solar Turbine concentrator electric system; (21) Modern Steam Engine for stationary and mobile power; (22) Heat Exchanger – for generating steam for the steam engine; (23) Gasifier Burner – for fuel pellets and other solid fuel; (24) Pelletizer – for producing fuel and food pellets from hay, wood, or any other solid fuel. Next comes fabrication - (25) MIG Welder for welding; (26) Oxy-hydrogen cutter – steel cutting with hydrogen generated from water;  (27) CNC Mill for milling metal; (28) CNC lathe for lathing; (29) Drill Press – heavy duty; (30) CNC torch table; (31) 3D printer – printing in plastic and metal (for circuits); (32) moldless casting with robotic arm; (33) hot rolling of metal; (34) ironworker machine – 150 ton hole punch and metal shear; (35) Induction Furnace for producing metal from scrap; (36) wire extrusion; (37) poultry – intensive grazed poultry with chicken incubator; (38) Bakery – open source gasifier brick oven; (39) dairy – milker and intensive grazing strategy, with butter and cheese production; (40) nursery – propagation of fruits, nuts, berries, other perennials.
=What is Open Source Ecology?=
OSE is a movement for the healthful interaction of human and natural ecosystems, based on land stewardship, regenerative resource use, open access to information, and distributive economics – which guarantee wholesome well-being to all of the planet's denizens. “Open source” comes from the open source software and hardware movements, and ecology refers to the harmonious integration of natural and human ecosystems.
=Do you have a physical facility?=
We have a physical facility – Factor e Farm – a dedicated 30 acre research lab for testing all the concepts, in the Kansas City area, Missouri – where the experiment begain in 2006.

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