The thing commons is all about small production and open design
The rationale for big factories and large quantities was always justification for equipment
Small-scale means produce-on-demand (different from food in this respect - one cannot produce food on demand in quite the same way).
need a screw? make a screw.
need a glass? make a glass.
open design is the information component.
rapid innovation, evolution, etc.
Sterling and spimes. Everything talks to everything else, and can tell you about itself (this is identical to the Flows programming architecture as well)
Arduino as well.
the end of big production
means less warehousing, less dumping, less shipping, etc.
[Important point, for people who don't know about RepRap and other desktop fabricators (including some at SI), this is going to sound like utopian futurism. The book will also need to have sidebar sections--with photographs--devoted just to descriptions of specific examples of projects and inventions EXISTING HERE AND NOW to make the point that this is much closer to happening than they may realize.]
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Plurality = a hundred garages, many producers
Diversity = each factory can produce from many designs. configurations of multiple factories can produce complex complexity
M2M = No longer the big factory floor. Car producers are also distributors. Old Navy(?) owns both factory and store. B&N publishes some of its own books.
P2P = We go from vertical to horizontal. Things I need can be made by local machines.
D.I.O. = If the design is inefficient, we can change it.
Objects & relations = Objects can be tailored to local conditions. Limited only by available designs (and the imaginations of those who create those designs).
For relations, no longer about the exchange of things, but rather the exchange of designs for things.
[This also means open standards. Otherwise, the design you share with me might be something my factory can't read. Hence Creative Commons licensing of designs. This is a threshold example. Without a certain minimum of openness in the design space, the system will not work. But if there are too many designs, they will overwhelm the system. So the design space will seek a state of equilibrium.]
To reconfigure an industrial factory to create a new set of outputs is a huge undertaking. Big structures are not malleable. But with small structures, we can retool things easily.
Basic properties of scalable open source technology projects
It is easy to use output of project as a building block towards building other things (both a product itself and a development platform Eric VonHippel: Things that are consumed are themselves made by the consumers. )
It is a modular design (designed for interoperability)
It is replicable, released under an open license, shareable online via a clone-able repository.
Milestones are co-identified, tasks are mapped to milestones (there are engageble affordances for contributors: allow people to scratch and itch)
Project consistently applies a local standard. (designed for interoperability)
For the majority of participants, access to the same parts/suppliers or have a device that can create parts for you.
Project is sufficiently visible in the network.
There is a basic co-governance structure in the project. There is a social contract with the community (this can be covered by the license, but there should also be explicit rules and terms about expectations of contribution etc).
(distilled from discussion between Erik deBruijn, Sam Rose, Suresh Fernando)
