[ox-en] Opensourcing biologically integrated systems for nutrition
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 10:06:03 +0200
Dear all,
I share with you a letter from Marcin Jakubowski.
Marcin is founder of Open Source Ecology and has recently
published their first achievements.
OSE is doing interesting things in regard to food and shelter -
maybe THE alternative to money as the prime supporter of time
for open source developers that Karel rightfully asks for.
here is marcins plan:
www.sourceopen.org
Although they are promoting a radical knowledge sharing model, and
although they clearly understand the significance of as quickly as
possibly raising autonomy and independence of people they are currently
doing lots of offline work and focusing on local cooperation. In their
words:
"The goal of OSE is to engage people in a sustainable lifestyle as a means
to addressing pressing world issues. We do this by providing the
opportunity to live sustainably at our land-based facility. This facility
is an intentional communy known as Open Source Enterprise Learning
Community. In this community, a sustainable lifestyle involves providing
many of the basic needs from on-site resources - food, housing, energy,
transportation, and culture. We engage in what we call neo-subsistence, or
technologically advanced subsistence that blends ancient wisdom and new
technology to provide a high quality of life. The lifestyle includes
meaningful work, service to the greater global community, and leisure to
pursue one's true interests. Neo-subsistence involves wise utilization of
resources and best practices that keeps overhead low and helps us to focus
on our mission. To advance the goals of neo-subsistence, we engage in
research aimed at developing goods and services to outside markets. These
goods and services aim at the highest level of ecological integrity and
quality that contributes to local prosperity in a global setting."
read more here:
http://www.sourceopen.org/wiki/?pagename=OpenSourceEcology.Mission
After a long break I and few others have heard from Marcin this week and I
share the link he gave me
http://www.sourceopen.org/wiki/?pagename=OpenSourceEcology.Hydroponics
I call it "the lettuce that made history"!
For the first time, a radical approach of knowledge sharing is combined
with a Neo-Subsistence community!
(well I hope that soon we will also hear from Frithjofs African New Work
village)
Jeff Buderer from OneVillage added that the lettuce should of course be
grown with the help of nutrients generated in a local flow between
complementary processes. He calls that "self-reliant/aquaponic growing
model.". I think we need to experiment with whole systems and understand
that we need a whole systems opensource. I mentioned John Todd. I asked
myself what would have happened if John Todd had the Internet back in
times in New Alchemy when they were experimenting with algae, fish and
tomatoes!
Anyway:
We will need a lot of products and support here. Once the model is
established, creative people like Karel will jump in and fill the voids
with sophisticated devices that allow us to make our locally painlessly
grown lettuces and tomatoes more tasteful, healthy etc. by allowing us to
render the flows more sophisticated....
so it is important things have started. The lettuce that made history.
----
Marcin wrote an interesting letter just now:
Jeff and Franz,
Open Source may apply to inorganic nutrients, which is what i am doing
currently, as well as for biologically integrated systems (organic). Peggy
Bradley (carbon.org) is the best springboard for developing the open
source
with inorganic nutrients, and she also covers some compost tea from worm
castings. Her CD is an excellent beginning.
I learned 2 things so far on the open source nature of the endeavor:
(1) For lettuce, nutrient cost is less than 1% of overhead if it sells for
50 cents for a 1/2 pound lettuce at wholesale
(2) Open source is a mighty concept when it comes to cracking through the
industrial system. I noticed that even the industrial nutrients are not
open
source. First, it is hard to get some of the components, and formulas are
key. Thus, opening up this information may be a great service to society.
If
one can open source industrial lettuce production, i predict that we will
get closer to Jeffersonian democracy (means of production in many hands).
Thus my approach. With initial economic power of open source industrial
systems, we can then start talking of transformation of the economic
system
in a mainstream fashion. I can't tell what will happen after that, but i
predict that open source industrial processes lead to collapse of mass
production and reinvention of production by the masses, namely, of
quality
goods.
That's my two cents.
Marcin
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de