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
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