Promise of Open Hardware

A grand promise of open hardware became clear as open source hardware was born in 1997 - see the history on Wikipedia.

A promise was implied - most clearly perhaps by Reprap's founding statements or OSE's writings, that collaborative, open development can transform the world with democratized production. This term has been abused and never realized (as of 2023). Which would have profound implications on solving the last frontier of economics - that of Distribution. Implying ready solution of poverty, war, and hunger - any issues based on resource scarcity.

This never happened. The current figure is that 8 people own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world's populaton. The wealth gap has increased since 2000, the advent of the internet - and the democratizing features of the current production system and the underlying technosphere remain questionable. True, the Steam Engine Enslaved then Freed the slaves in America, and Uber provided millions of jobs. This is far from the potential, however, as political polarization and resentment abound - fueled at least in part by people struggling to make a living. Where resentment can be tapped as means of mass political ponerology.

As 'resource scarcity' implies, 'abundance' is the solution. It's not a hippy ideal. It's a rigorous condition of responsibility and effective productivity that leaves nobody behind. It requires discipline - as discussed in Good to Great.

For OSE, this is still only the beginning. Open hardware collaboration will not happen overnight - much rewiring of human minds towards abundance thinking has yet to happen. Because the process is hard - we would have to thoroughly rewire the operating system of humanity's scarcity-based economics. See my discussion on why this is hard, expressed in 2023 - [1] Note - video needs to be liberated from paywall.