Nicholas Totten
Marcin Jakubowski <joseph.dolittle@gmail.com> to Nicholas Totten <niklastotten@gmail.com> date Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:05 AM subject Re: a couple infos mailed-by gmail.com
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On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Nicholas Totten <niklastotten@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Marcin,
I'm sorry I did not get back with you sooner about the couple of things we talked about at the farm. It was nice to meet you, although I wished we all had more time to spend on the farm to help out but also to relax and converse with each other. Do you ever take time for this, by the way, or was that weekend just special because so many of us were there at once to help out?
Honestly speaking, I always take time for this when we are discussing realistic implementations. Back when I was in school, I'd love to talk about this stuff theoretically. Now - been there, done that - and the only discussion that's really interesting is that which makes tangible progress on the Global Village Construction Set. I hope you can understand that - the GVCS is extremely important to the world. It's not a pet peeve - it's world work.
Plus, as you see, now is the time when the rubber hits the road - we still have 6000 bricks left to press if we want a structure with 4 walls, not 2 - as present progress indicates. We're really pressed for time - and the good weathe is ending soon.
So this is the website about acetylene creation and utilization, which does not include much information about actual processes: www.afuelsllc.com
Very interesting, but unfortunately proprietary, so not much can be gleaned in terms of distributive economic progress.
I tried to look up a bit more on wikipedia, but it was mostly the chemical science, which you might find helpful, but I think experimentation and application is probably most helpful. IT seems, though, based on what I found, that you can grind up limestone as small as possible and then mix with crushed charcoal, and then fuse them together with your arc welder in a crucible or in whatever seems to work. then adding water to the product; which MUST also be safely stored, if you make extra; will produce the acetylene that you can burn, so it seems like some sort of funneling attachment for a controlled burning and pressure regulation would be helpful. Just let me know, please, if you attmept it and if it works out.
We don't have sufficient research behind us to attempt it. We will, however, experiment with pyrolysis oil - which can be made readily and safely.
I do enjoy the inventing process, and I look forward to spending some real time on the farm to collaborate specifically in regard to the environment of the farm and the resources available, etc.
We will be holding the First World Conference on Open Source Ecology here, next summer. In it, people are invited to work on projects related to the GVCS - http://factorefarm.org/view/projects/all . So, if you have a concrete proposal and budget, we can proceed to funding it and making it happen with you as leader of the project.
the only other thing I mentioned directly was the possible Radon testing of the earth, from which we make bricks.
Point me to leads on equipment, or better yet, how do we make an open source Geiger counter?
Here are some rammed earth websites, which I find very interesting. Creating earth blocks might not always be the best way to go.
The first one is an example of building one, and the other one and the attachment are studies involving fly ash, like you mentioned.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1973-09-01/How-To-Build-A-Rammed-Earth-House.aspx
http://www.dab.uts.edu.au/ebrf/research/botswana_1.html
I hope that you continue to keep us updated on progress and specific ideas.
Sign up for project news at the bottom left of http://factorefarm.org/view/projects/all .
Also Richard attempts to tell us all the things that the organzation/farm needs, like pamphlets, website work, etc., but I still feel unlear about what is necessary. Would you please take a little time to make an organized, detailed list of things that need to be done?
If you come here, I can give you the full lowdown. If things are unclear, it's because we're building a village - and short of resources, we really need a full time PR person/marketing person to keep up with the explosive developments that happen on a daily basis.
Right now, we are working on a new initiative, 1000 True Fans - 1000 Villages campaign.
This morning I thought of Kevin Kelly's "Thousand True Fans". I propose a "1000 True Fans, 1000 Villages" campaign:
Find 1000 supporters who commit to $10 per month.
These people are those interested in building these Global Villages of tomorrow. Can you help me find 1000 such people? We could quadruple our output with a mere $10k/month.
CEB machine going into production, highest performance in the world, 5x less cost than the competition. That' s the only real proof we'll be producing on April 1.
Let's try the 1000 true fans. I have a $20k package - teachable in 2 years of immersion - that one can generate - to produce about $2 million of infrastructure. This is a crystallization of open source agroecology and digital fabrication - with all essential infrastructure technologies - based on the fact that advanced society can be created at the cost of scrap steel.
How? Melt metal and cast + digital fab, and you have essentially recreated the entire industrial system from scratch, in the open source. This is a subset of the equation:
high skill + OS + fab + gene bank = abundance.
Abundance is also the best governance.
We should talk about this possibility - I'd like to see if you get as excited about it as I. If you do, then you're the right man to market this message. I don't think this is fiction - all my experience to date is convincing me more strongly that this is feasible - and capable of being carried out in about 2 years of time.
Anyway, that's the short of it, I'd like to see if we can make this happen. We simply need support - our message is marketable, but so far we have not succeeded in marketing it extensively.
You'd have to do some heavy thinking to think of cool strategies. Start by studying our blog carefully, and go from there.
blog.opensourceecology.org
Marcin
Thanks
All the best, Also, Viel Erfolg ( in german, it means (I wish you) much accomplishment/much 'following')
Nick
P.S. this video is impressive and fascinating in many ways.
