{"id":12951,"date":"2011-06-24T11:03:04","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=12951"},"modified":"2011-06-24T11:03:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:03:04","slug":"open-source-ecologys-civilization-starter-kit-the-global-village-construction-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/open-source-ecologys-civilization-starter-kit-the-global-village-construction-set\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Source Ecology’s “Civilization Starter Kit”: the Global Village Construction Set"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"lifetrac<\/a>
The Lifetrac open-source DIY tractor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday, as I was putting together the week’s green tech finds<\/a> post over at SUNfiltered, I came across the Solar Fire<\/a>, another open source solar concentrator<\/a> concept. That was cool enough in itself, but I also saw that this idea was connected to another that a friend had recently introduced to me: Open Source Ecology’s Global Village Construction Set<\/a>, “an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.”<\/p>\n

Huh? Well, imagine being able to fabricate five thousand bricks a day<\/a> with the dirt on your land… and with a machine you built yourself. Or working your land with a tractor<\/a> you built from scrap metal that could run on biodiesel you also made yourself from waste vegetable oil. These are just two of the prototyped concepts from the GVCS… the Solar Fire is now a part of the mix, also.<\/p>\n

The concept was developed by Marcin Jakubowski (a friend of a friend… we haven’t met in person yet), who’s organized the Factor e Farm<\/a> in western Missouri as a testing\/proving ground for the broad concept of building a community with self-built appropriate technology<\/a>. I could attempt to spell it all out here, but I think Marcin himself does a much better job in a short TED talk he gave in April:<\/p>\n