Marcin Jakubowski presented a TED talk about how open source could transition from software to hardware, and his personal open source hardware wiki. He started by explaining his personal wiki that he created to help common people build their own equipment. Him and his team had created a list of 50 machines that were would be hardest to live without. His list started with a tractor because without that it would be exponentially harder to harvest food and other laborious tasks. He built the prototype for the tractor by himself and then published the list of the other 50 machines and showed his tractor as an example. Increasing numbers of people visited the wiki and helped develop prototypes and designs for the other machines.
My personal thoughts that I take away from watching this TED talk mainly include the idea that open source doesn’t have to be confined to the internet and open source will benefit larger numbers of people and help spark creativity in some. Marcin’s wiki’s benefits wouldn’t just spread where the internet is available because hardware is easier to transfer to remote areas than software. Then the people in those areas would be able to expand on those ideas even without access to the internet. These hardware innovations are nothing new but they are cheaper to build, repair and longer lasting alternatives made with scrap metal and common items. Also the blog gives a wider variety of people the opportunity to express their ideas and contribute. Since it is open source, many people could work on the same project at the same time without every meeting each other but still being able to express themselves and help the overall image.
Marcin’s focus was less on his face to face speaking to the audience but instead more at directing the audience’s attention to the screen behind him. He displayed many images and time lapse video to demonstrate his progress on his project and the progress of hardware open sourcing as a whole. He talked slowly and precisely using simple language and personal words. This created an environment in which the person watching the video/audience could feel like they could easily connect to Marcin. He also talked in a way that anybody you meet could understand, enhancing the idea of open source being open to anyone.
This concept could easily be applied to education and is actively present the world around us (students). Open sourcing would be a very applicable education because as students their work is not usually accepted but open sourcing is open to anyone. This theory could also be applied to education to promote creativity in school classrooms and assignments. Openness would keep creativity from being “forced” on students. It could also encourage student collaboration and the willingness to work together.
You can see the full list of Marcin’s ecology prototypes and list of expected prototypes in the near future HERE. This does make me wonder, how much effort would it take for a group of high schoolers to start an open source project similar to this. Looking at the TED talk you can see a graph showing the progress of his project and once it had a few followers it gained ground exponentially and eventually he got invited to a TED conference. But looking at the transition from software open sourcing to hardware open sourcing it doesn’t seem to fit the trend of the conceptual age that Daniel Pink illustrates. It almost reverts back to the industrial age with the common man making his own tools, and the tools illustrated by Marcin are, for the most part, not new but rather more makeshift versions of existing ones. So do you think open sourcing will be part of the conceptual age? If so please specify whether it you think it would be more software, hardware or maybe neither?
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