by jonathan.starr1 min read23rd Apr 20233 comments

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Hey guys the below is not my work, so I feel unqualified to represent them. But it feels relevant to our interests:

https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenSourceEcology/

Basically it's a project to open-source every important machine tool a small town could need to be "industrial" for some given value of same. There are 50 machines on their list and they aim to get kinda high up the existing tech tree (3D printer, induction furnace, robotic arm, laser cutter, ect). The site is light on posts after 2020 but the Facebook page has a March 15th post and the sub-reddit has some activity as of a mouth ago. Their reported savings over C.O.T.S. versions of the machines are impressive. They have gotten so far that at the very least it seems worth snap-shotting their wiki so it can be picked back up again by someone should they lose web hosting.

I met Jason Crawford at the AC10 meetup in Boston today (4/22/2023) and when I mentioned it he'd not heard of it. But if this has already been posted here sorry /shrug. I would be interest to hear what all the folks here think of what they have been doing and whether it can be revived or built on.

edited slightly for spelling and clarity.

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[-]Arturo Macias2y 3

I have been following this for years, but the project does not progress very much (there are more machines, but the community has not grown). The village set would be both useful for civilization RE-construction and for civilization (First) construction in poor countries. In my first post in the EA Forum I tried to produce some interest either in this project or some susbtitute, because no other open source project could be more useful.

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[-]jasoncrawford2y 1

Related: The Long Now Foundation's Manual for Civilization

“What books would you want to restart civilization from scratch?”

The Long Now Foundation has been involved in and inspired by projects centered on that question since launching in 01996. (See, for example, The Rosetta Project, Westinghouse Time Capsules, The Human Document Project, The Survivor Library, The Toaster Project, The Crypt of Civilization, and the Voyager Record.) For years, Executive Director Alexander Rose has been in discussions on how to create a record of humanity and technology for our descendants. In 02014, Long Now began building it.

The Manual For Civilization is working toward a living, crowd-curated library of 3,500 books put forward by the Long Now community and on display at The Interval.

See also Lewis Dartnell's book The Knowledge.

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