This is @erikdebruijn's talk at BOTACON 0 in New York, December 2010.
I talk about the non-rival nature of information and how a culture of sharing enables the emerging phenomenon of open hardware.
1. Question Do you want to work in a system that is rooted in rivalry and the creation of artificial scarcity? Or Do you want to contribute to a world of plenty, where access is not restricted, where there's continuity of your ideas, and which invites others to co-mingle their ideas to make it awesome?
Do you want to work in a system that is rooted in rivalry and the creation of artificial scarcity? Or Do you want to contribute to a world of plenty, where access is not restricted, where there's continuity of your ideas, and which invites others to co-mingle their ideas to make it awesome?
This talk, as an exception will be from non-tech point of view. For my master's I've done some research on a community that I really love, the RepRap project, and very closely related to that are the Makerbot and other bot-communities. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about my conclusions. Thanking you for your time!
Start by thanking you for your time. Lot's of RepRappers and Makerbotters have participated in the survey.
Cover sheet To what extent is the open source development methodology also applicable to physical object design To approach this, this requires is to understand the following...
“ He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” This property of idea's, information and even software is much more important today than in the days of Thomas Jefferson
Information GOODS, information, software, and – CAD files. Who should society make responsible for producing idea's, knowledge and software? Private firms, or public institutions like this university? State / private firms A central question becomes:
ONE answer was given Jospeph Schupeter: “ If one wants to induce firms to undertake R&D one must accept the creation of monopolies as a necessary evil.” Neccesary? Assumption that is challenged more and more evidence. vH and my own.
If producers have the control to restrict the spreading of value to everyone,.... limiting other companies from offering, or limiting the spreading of information goods
NEXT
...some people will pay for it, so they can keep developing other, profitable, products. Kinds of products they develop most -> large & low-risk markets. For highly original idea's, market acceptance is uncertain.
The reasoning is, in short: In order to develop idea's, a company needs to be able to make money through exclusion. society grants a temporary monopoly But, are firms to only ones with good ideas? They look for large markets, certainty to sell products. Can they earn money if there is no legal protection? It appears, yes. But is this for-profit, firm centric and market motivated the only source of idea's?
Many people with idea's out there
What would REALLY be perfect? If they could GIVE their idea's away for free, to everyone! What would be perfect?
And of course this is a many-to-many type of interaction If they collaborated and could build on each other's ideas Vary on: motives, knowledge, experience and live in diff. Environments So, for participating in open source development, what do these motives look like?
Crime is committed. But the same logic applies to socially constructive behavior. How do they relate to open source development So let's start with the motives...
Does the ability to profit have a role? If so, it's usually subordinate to other motive, like competence, relatedness and meaning. And profit motives can significantly diminish creativity and innovation. Diverse motives = robust
Comparing Mendel's Law ;) and Moore's Law might seem like comparing apples and oranges, or 3D printers and transistors. Still, we're talking about quantities with emergent characteristics.
Endogenous to the community. Money? Community Access to knowledge, spreading workload, etc. Infrastructure Fabricators Sharing platforms A commons of physical designs
Access to knowledge, access to collaborators allowing you to spread the workload, resources Next: Infrastructure (repositories, wiki's thingiverse, etc.)
These machines have allowed more than 10.000 of open source objects to materialize.
Modularity – work independently, reuse, transparency Granularity – tasks that match the varying level of ambition of participants