Not sure if this is the best place to present this idea, but giving it a try. My 'thing' is Post-Industrial Futurism and this year I've been considering different ways to communicate ideas about the emerging new culture to the mainstream. But it's a difficult subject to simply discuss, dealing with a lot of new language, economic theory, and so on while futurology as a general topic tends to be dominated by either the tired old dystopianism pushed by popular media or the psychedelic utopianism of Singularity Futurism. So I've been thinking about projects that would bring this topic to a more accessible level. Make it more tangible. Put it in a form suited to visual media like video.
An uncurrent to the current Maker movement is an idea sometimes called 'unplugging'; the notion that one might leverage open technologies of independent production on paring away dependence on the market system and thus recovering at least some of the time and freedom from our lives that goes to other peoples' profit. Some have suggested that a new kind of early retirement may soon emerge where Makers design their homes to be engines of subsistence, allowing them to reduce the cash overhead of their daily living to a minimum without the drastic compromises in standard of living typical of low-tech agrarian intentional communities.
What might such a lifestyle be like? What would be different or similar to how we live today? What would the daily routine be like? How would one adopt this lifestyle and craft this 'home subsistence engine'? What would it cost in money or personal time/labor? What works today and what still needs work? How close can we get to this ideal? This is something I'd like to explore and so I've arrived at the idea of a documentary or reality show loosely similar to the many home improvement shows we have today but based on the premise of crafting and showcasing a home and lifestyle based as much as possible on Open Source technology. Everything from the house and all the furnishings in it to a car, energy systems, and modest scale semi-automated urban farming all based on open technology, on designs downloaded from the Internet, and made with the new digital tools of the Fab Lab.
This might seem a little far-fetched if you're not already familiar with the Maker/open design sub-culture, but in fact there are enough open source designs available right now that could make this possible. The cornerstone of the project--an easy DIY open source house--is actually something of an obsession for designers today and systems like that of the WikiHouse project have been around for some years. Being based on different materials, methods of fabrication, different means of acquisition, and a very different premise of design, open artifacts offer a very distinct aesthetic from that of the conventional suburban habitat.
The catch is that these designs remain very dispersed over the globe and the internet. So far, no one has tried to assemble them all into a turnkey showcase package--with the exception of the very ground-up agrarian-focused Global Village Construction Set of the Open Source Ecology project. And there are some curious omissions like refrigerators and other domestic appliances as their alternative designs just haven't yet occurred to the open design community. This project would demand a few new and bespoke designs too.
I feel this could be a very interesting project and thus make for a very interesting video program. There is much interest today in DIY building, Tiny Houses, intentional communities, eco-tech, new gardening tech, and the exploration of new lifestyles. Here would be a project that not only offers all that but a journey into the future as well, giving viewers an experience hinting at what life may become as we move toward a Post-Industrial era. And maybe a bit of a 21st century take on Alone In The Wilderness too.
What would be needed to realize this project? First off, of course, would be sponsors and a video production team. Then comes a place to put this showcase home. This could be either permanent or temporary. Or one could start in a temporary location and move to a more permanent one. We even have an option to build on water as open technology for floating buildings also exists. One of the unique aspects of open housing designs is that they are often demountable--as easy to dismantle and move as they are to build. One of the interesting things about architecture in the future is that housing technology is trending toward a disconnect of the value of buildings from the value of land, leading to a short-circuiting of the basis of real estate speculation in the 'improvement' of land. It might be interesting to do this in Greece right now.
Next would be the fab lab; the new workshop of digital and conventional tools needed to fabricate everything going into this showcase home. This would include primary tools like flat-bed CNC machine for heavy sheet materials, laser cutter for lighter sheet material, and 3D printer as well as conventional light woodworking, metalworking, and electronics tools. Some more exotic new digital production tools might also be showcased, such as digital weaving and fabric making machines, DLP based 3D printers, and so on. Domestic robots of different sorts is another possibility, along with Smart Home features. The shop design would need to account for its use as a video studio documenting production. A new fab lab could be created for this project--perhaps ideally in transportable form using shipping container shelters or other temporary shelters then integrating it into the home itself, since that workshop would be a key element of self-sufficiency. But there's also promotional potential in production support from existing commercial workshops like TechShop or university fab labs. Perhaps a 'bootstrap' strategy where the transitional on-site shop and its shelter is started with a prefabbed 'beachhead' package produced by a sponsor shop.
Some fabrication might not be suitable for a home shop quite yet. For instance, we can 3D print houses and cars now, but the large format 3D printers used are still too expensive for independent ownership and use. We still need a capability for high resolution extrusion printing using diverse materials and light compact arm-based robots with long reach and thus large working areas--something very close but not quite here yet. Depending on support, we might limit our domestic vehicles to bicycle hybrids, which we would likely feature in any case as they're fun and easy to make.
Would we want to showcase family or solitary living? It would be useful to demonstrate the potential for individual production with these new tools and tech and a family home would, of necessity, be much larger. But from a video production standpoint a family might be more relatable.
In addition to the basic home and workshop environment, the project would also feature demonstration of urban farming, which is also often a focus of open design. Use of semi-automated hydroponics or aquaponics and Living Machine greywater and air purification is likely and a greenhouse or solarium integral or adjacent to the home would be part of the basic design.
True DIY solar power, though possible, is still a bit of a challenge. Currently, such systems are limited to complex solar-dynamic technology or cruder photovoltaics based on organic dyes. (believe it or not, you can actually home-brew photovoltaic cells using cranberry or blueberry juice...) So it's likely the home would more extensively employ wind turbines or seek to integrate its farming and waste handling to power production. (ie, a compost-driven fuel cell system or some kind of biofuel production)
So I think this covers the basic idea without getting too carried away with details. What do folks think of the prospects for this?
Submitted July 29, 2015 at 09:24AM by EricHunting http://ift.tt/1IIArfS Lightbulb
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