True Fans

Introduction

True Fans are supporters of the 1000 True Fans - 1000 Global Villages campaign . Here you can read why people have joined the campaign, as a motivation for you to join if you're not already signed up.

True Fans

Benjamin Kaplin I'm a mechanical engineering student, and I support the OSE because a completed Open Source Village kit would represent several orders of magnitude of improvement over existing projects to improve living conditions around the globe with technology. I grew up reading Stephenson, and one of the most powerful images in his book Diamond Age is The Seed, a nanotechnology McGuffin that one of the main characters devotes his life to that would take the control of production and self-determination out of the hands of the McCorporations and put it into the hands of revolutionaries and the impoverished. Needless to say, nanotech is still several decades away from that dream, and contributing to the True Fans campaign helps a realistic Seed program without pulling me away from my studies.

Benjamin Kaplin

Marcin Jakubowski, opensourceecology at gmail dot com, marcin_ose on Skype I started the campaign because I have observed how little of humanity's true potential has been tapped. Everyone slaves their life away to a system that is crumbling at the seams. I believe that we can all reach absolute prosperity and evolve to freedom - by becoming skilled and productive Integrated Humans, and by helping anyyone else to do the same. History has shown that this is a general formula for lasting prosperity. As long as we're wise, it should be trivial to get beyond the economics of scarcity. We need to show the world how to build the world's first, replicable, open source global village - so anyone who wants to can evolve to freedom.

Marcin Jakubowski

Jeremy Mason, jeremymaso at gmail dot com I am supporting OSE because I want to someday replicate Factor e Farm and help everyone evolve to freedom. I am on-site at Factor e, my first project is the sawmill.

Jeremy Mason

Scott Akridge As I get older I'm more and more interested in helping people. A couple weeks back I enlisted the help of a friend to help in developing a CEB press when I began doing research and found www.openfarmtech.org with the open source CEB press. I continued looking for more information but kept coming back to this site for more info and learned more about the project and found I wanted to get involved. I started by becoming a member and donating $10 a month with plans to build the CEB press and build a couple structures then make the effort a cooperative. After reading more I've decided to also build a sawmill, assuming I can recruit some help. I think this is a great project and am excited to be a part of it in a small way.

Toby Martin I support OSE because... It's an intelligent and direct effort to address some of the most serious problems we face as individuals and as a society. It's one of the most interesting and creative projects I've ever heard of. I see no reason in principle that it can't improve people's lives. It's actually happening.

Toby Martin

Lucas González, imagina (dot) canarias at gmail dot com I support OSE because both the model and the elements add some important missing pieces to what I perceive is going on. I think it's important to have local possibilities for water, food and energy everywhere. Not just at the household level but more importantly at the village or more aggregated levels. Even if you end up buying stuff from elsewhere, it's best if that happens by choice, not by necessity. It was not by choice when things were local by default and it's not by choice now that things are global by default. The whole process of open sharing of ideas, processes, know-how is intriguing and, at the very least, extremely fun to watch. (I really wish I had more time to join in myself, but I'm doing things that need doing. So I translate, tell others, and chip in with a little cash, less than what others spend in smoking. My choice.) I'm particularly interested in some items for specific locations. Energy for water in sunny places is a must. Shelter and water collection systems. You name it. Do we really know how far and how fast this can go? I think there's bound to be a catalitic process so that more and more technologies will come out openly, in an exciting incarnation of the Stone Soup story. So I want to help keep the fire going. It really looks like this can be done, should be done, will be done in 2 years. Less than 2 years now. The whole world now has a sense of urgency, I feel. I'd like to see what we can do after this. But the time is ripe for this, now. It's interesting to note how open content gives us a sense of ownership. Many have felt that with software. I want to see that with hardware.

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Joseph Zarr, joseph.zarr@gmail.com

Joseph Zarr

I am an anthropologist, a farmer, and a permaculturist by training. I support OSE because, well, let's be frank: This is arguably the coolest project on the planet. I am most attracted to Factor E Farm and OSE because of the overall themes of personal improvement (via daily spiritual and physical discipline - in whatever forms a person deems appropriate), human production, and an intertwined personal and community growth. We must collaboratively market the ownership of our futures.

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As our resource pool dwindles globally, largely due to corporate theft and errant industrial practices, we will have to produce locally and 'in-source'. With a dwindling petroleum base, our dream of cheap energy will disappear. These are simple facts. We must invest human energies in locally-based solutions. We must ignore our propagandized 'reality' and create a meaningful existence together. With drastically increasing populations (estimated 70 million per year), we must teach ourselves the merits of collaboration, co-housing, and SHARING. My opinion is the era of individualized ownership is archaic and ill-advised. Only by sharing and producing what we actually need, and sharing what we already have (be it skills, books, resources etc.), will we experience the next stage of cultural progress. Hopefully, in the not so distant future our children's hands will not deform due to excessive playing of video games but, rather, they will callous, strengthen and scar due to meaningful labor and a 'hands-on' reality; i.e. literacy, numeracy, production = freedom. The only debts we owe are to ourselves and our community. Let's pay up.

Josef Davies-Coates I'm founder United Diversity and co-founder of The Open Co-op and support this project because of all the many many VERY cool projects I follow, this is perhaps the most inspiring and important. I can't think of a better way I could possibly spend my money.

[[Image:|thumb|Josef Davies-Coates]]

Reto Stauss, reto.stauss(at)gmail.com, rstauss on Skype I am mainly attracted by the momentum this projects develops. And of course because it is not talking but doing. My hope is that inspires my own little project (actually it already did): open source goods produced by small, agile manufactories. Lucas, Joseph, sign your points.

Reto Stauss

Geoff Capper, geoff (at) floodstreetfarmlet.net I am supporting OSE because it is showing us that it is possible to regain control over the complex systems that to an extent have come to rule our lives. We can build our own machinery, we can build our own future, we can be free. The activity at Factor e Farm is truly inspiring, and I hope to use many of the products building up our own small farm, which may hopefully inspire others locally.