WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Tangible problems. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I always felt from as long as I can remember about the power of science, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that it could be used to solve pressing issues, solve problems. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I studies Chemistry at Princeton it was so theoretical, unapplied. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I thought oh ok, maybe if I go into physics it will get better. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I did, and was grossly disappointed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were studying wave propagation, and I couldn't understand this one problem, this one equation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I went to the professor and I said whats this about, where does this exist? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And he said well it actually doesn't exist, I just made it up. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's like, oh ok, so thats what we do here. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That was one of those turning points where I said, wow what am I doing here? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In an absolute abundance of resources, power, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 human development and culture and everything, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 still theres many issues. Mainly the resource conflicts. Poverty, war, depravation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Survival with the awesome technology that we do have today? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Survival should not take a lot of time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When you really think about it, all the wealth that we enjoy today for a modern standard of living 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 relies on rocks, soil, sunlight, plants, water. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Those are all abundant. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yet the productive mechanism of society is what makes it scarce, artificially so. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What if we could survive and thrive up to a modern standard of living, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and not only that, at two hours a day of work, and from local resources. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How would that be? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The most important part of Open Source Ecology is this idea that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with a small amount of resources and a small amount of money, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 anybody should be able to create a high standard of living for themselves, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and do it in a way that doesn't require a whole lot of time, a whole lot of money. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People can actually be empowered but he technology we're creating here, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so rather than a big corporation deciding what machines can do for us, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we can decide how we want machines to work for us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Instead of relying on other people to make things that we need, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we can make everything that we need for ourselves 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we can do it better than Walmart can do it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we can do it better than slave labour in China can do it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We can make the productive capacity that we need to live the lives that we want 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in our own back yards, and we can do it in a sustainable way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We can make machines that we can use to create material abundance for ourselves, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then we can show other people how to do it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you have two-hundred people get together 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and if they want to put together a self-sustaining community, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they don't have many options as far as coming up with the equipment and machines for doing that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thats where Open Source Ecology really comes in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The costs of building these machines is about ten percent of what you would buy it for commercially. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you take a full blown John Deer tractor, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's almost impossible for anyone to go out and try to build one of those for themselves. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a vey custom machine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But if you're able to take off-the-shelf engines and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 go down to your hardware store and buy steel and build it yourself, like the Lifetrac, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then thats much more realistic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The benefits of a localised economy are that the power stays within the community. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Instead of your money, the earnings, going all the way down river, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what if we can internalise that? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Keep that wealth in, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by having all that productive mechanism built in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You produce the same, the wealth stays in, you don't have to work so hard. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then you can have time for you family and kids, or whatever else is more important to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So its a lot easier and production wise to just have one super compatible module. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Powercube right now works with both the Lifetrac and the CEB Press, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a few other machines we have, like the Ironworker and the Coldsaw. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So that provides a much simpler product ecology 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because one power unit serves multiple machines. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Theres one thing about just being able to look at machines that have been developed on site here, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and another thing to understand how the development process went through 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and what kind of documentation there is for these machines, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 such that can be replicated and improved on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Fortunately we have that ability to have machine information in the digital format, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and now we have telecom, the Internet, to relay that information and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 have anyone just copy over the files, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and have access to the model on their computer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So Open Source Ecology tries to capture the open source nature of development 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the fact that we're connected to Nature, to other people, to societal institutions. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That all has to be considered if we're talking about a paradigm to make a better world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Open source was clearly the emerging trend that was so powerful. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Demonstrated with open source software like the Linux platform. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When a sufficient number of people come together on a project, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that project simply becomes better than anything else. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we're transitioning that into the hardware space. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What would happen if people actually collaborated on making open source hardware? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have lots of technology out there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But to organise the technology in such a way that it's accessible, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 without barriers to people, that is a very significant move forward. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now it's there for the individuals to organise themselves, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and to really dig deeply, almost to what you would say a spiritual level. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To really change their attitudes, and to take advantage of what is there, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and to move our civilisation forward. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm hopeful that human kind will arise to the occasion and seize the opportunity offered by this development. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Open Source Ecology is really about creating the next economy: the open source economy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what does that mean? It's an economy that optimises not only production, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which the present economy is really good at, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's effective in production, but distribution is not so great. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And how do you do that? And that is by opening... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so called giving away trade secrets for free, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or developing open source products for just about anything that we use. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So imagine a scenario where instead of corporations all competing, reinventing the wheel and so forth, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a lot of competitive waste, what if everyone were to join together to make the best products, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the most robust products, that are open source, that anyone has access to producing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then we can run an economy in a collaborative way, instead of a competitive wasteful way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A film by Tristan Copley Smith