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Michel Bauwens wrote:
I think there is actually quite a bit of activity around open hardware/physical production through open design communities only 2-3 years ago, the field was in the doldrums, with negative assessments of the previous wave of experiments (expressed by graham seaman if I'm not mistaken); but as I discovered about 6 months ago, and which prompted me to create the design pages, see http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design, the field is again in a strong moment of re-emergence, with tons of practical projects emerging in all kinds of fields: http://p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking
Yes, that was me, though the assessment was only negative in the sense that the kind of cumulative process seen in the creation of Linux, which I had expected to see repeated in chip design, had not yet happened. I still think that what is happening now (in electronics, I don't know about other areas) shows that the underlying pressures towards peer production are still there - and even increasing - but that the breakthrough has not yet materialized (maybe a bad choice of word ;-).
Until recently I thought the sense of disappointment I felt was due to my having misunderstood the processes going on at a logical level; in particular the relation between commercial and 'hobbyist' designers, which is clearly even more important here than it is for free software.
However, someone just sent me a huge pile of documents he says show that the US government has been systematically working to isolate any medium to large scale companies working with free designs. I'm not sure how real this is till I get a chance to read it (though the guy knows far more than me about both the technical and the commercial sides of electronics), or what I should do with it if it does look real, but it is certainly a possibility. In which case the reasons are political, and once again show the tendency of oekonux-like thinking to underestimate the political...
Aside from conventional chip design - do you know of anyone working on free development of polymer-based electronics using ink-jet printers? If not, why do you think there isn't? It seems such a logical area to extend to, and surely there must be people with both knowledge of polymers and links to peer production?
Graham _________________________________ Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/ Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/ Contact: projekt oekonux.de
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