Collaboration Ecology
Bit Picture Introduction
Collaboration ecology refers to Open Source Ecology's overarching system of collaboration, including online and real events, with Test-Driven Design-Build, both realtime and asynchronous, towards solving Pressing World Issues. OSE is a pioneer in collaborative design, as the only effort in the world carrying out a decades-long program to opensource the technosphere in its entirety - by developing and documenting all results openly as a global, collaborative effort. OSE believes that an open technoshpere is a prerequisite for building democratic society, in harmony with natural life support systems. As of 2020, the concept of OSE has been in existence for 16 years, as is in its initial stages of large-scale development towards solving pressing world issues. Bt large-scale, we mean corporate-scale (yet distributed and open) product research and development, involving teams of thousands and budgets of millions.
Such a process begins with gathering around a massive transformative purpose (as in Diamandis), which involves improving conditions on Earth for continuaing survival of humans without detroying life support systems. This is a basis for space travel, immortality, and learning to get along with each other, with the latter being perhaps the most challenging - among other developments.
The Sustainable Development Goals capture many of the requirements for prosperity, and OSE's work is in line with most of this. OSE's perspective is that technology can help, but the real progress lies in upgrading the software in our heads to become more collaborative. As such, we would be able to solve problems more effectively, without running into anthropogenic, technogical, unintended consequences that can compromise the continuity of sentient civilization as we know it.
The central question for OSE is thus how we can collaborate effectively - towards collaborative design for a transparent and inclusive economy of abundance. We simply do not believe that increasing polarization between the haves and have-nots is sustainable. We believe that great power imbalances can lead to great catastrophies between different people. Thus the primary effort of civilization should focus on achieving balance - by transparency and collaboration.
This approah explains some of OSE's current activity: to opensource the technosphere, to educate all, to create mutually assured abundance, to empower everyone towards thriving.
Access to power is access to knowledge and aducation. From the productive perspective - open source, collaborative product design implies that everyone, as opposed to the select few - benefit from scientific, technological, productive advancement.
As such, our platform supports such a program. An open publishing interface - the wiki - allows collaborative publishing where people can collaborate on sense-making and product development. There are known taxonomies (product development process) and organizational principles (agile, scrum, extreme manufacturing) and repositories with version control. The OSE platform has a discussion platform, the Forum, which promotes constructive discussion around Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on the approach of open, collaborative development to reach these goals. OSE also uses Extreme Enterprise events to distributed wealth via collaborative, open product development. OSE trains people in its workshops, technical school, and university programs. OSE provides access to capital - in its most essential form of education, materials productiuon, and provision of goods and services across its campuses and worldwide.
The OSE Campuses are centers of human development as the locus of innovation in human progress. We create technologies and institutions - the core of our education program revolves around creating change makers who work on important unsolved questions about technology and society. The OSE Campus is where we promote systems design, integrity, and wholeness in humans - as we train them to be stewards of the world around them in a framework of transformation and lifelong learning, where we create possibility - and opportunity.
On the ground, we develop 50 machines and 500 modules as we open up the technosphere to human access. We develop blueprints for civilization, which means product designs of technologies and institutions. We favor an entrepreneurial approach as we create circular economies as a result, where people unjob into their true callings.
We use and create standard tools such as open source software, open source hardware, CAD, calculations, diagrams, bills of materials, and bills of instructions. By following a certain Taxonomy, we coordinate thousands of people to work collaboratively while keeping the effort organized.
Specific Interrelations
- 50 machines, 500 Modules - there is a class on each. Each is extended to a deep product ecology. For example, cement mixer is integrated with cement maker - or limestone burner. Plus tractors for excavation and fisheries for the afterlife in the form of a pond.
Collaboration Areas
Links
- Collaboration Architecture
- Team architecture document - [1]
- Collaboration Ecology 2014