#48 Open Source Ecology With Marcin Jakubowski

Posted on Thursday, Jul 30, 2020
This week’s guest is Marcin Jakubowski from the Open Source Ecology project. They’re making some really cool things and have a plan for giving people the tools (creative and otherwise) to build their own civilization.

Show Notes

Marcin guests this episode and talks about Open Source Ecology and their “Blueprints for Civilization”, which is a list of 50 different machines that they’ve determined are essential for a self-sustaining, distributed society. Really interesting stuff. The machines themselves are pretty cool and they’ve got prototypes of a lot of them already. Of course, I’m just kind of drooling over the cool stuff that could be made with these tools. Build my own furnace for melting steel? Yes please! And you can help contribute to finalizing and improving these designs because they’re all released under a Creative Commons license and the designs are produced in FreeCAD.

We also get into licensing and the value of trying to accomplish “big things” in a very short amount of time, like developer sprints, game jams, the 48 Hour Film Project, and the Extreme Enterprise event that they’re planning on doing next summer (2021).

Other notes/links:

  • Visit FOSSdome. She’s doing some really interesting things for planetarium work with open source creative tools. Definitely worth a look.
  • I was a guest on another podcast! If you’re interested in people talking about fun Linux-related things, give a listen to mintCast.
  • This show is now available in more places:
  • Have a look at my books and merch if you’re interested in supporting the show.

And that should do it! Talk to you next week!

Guests

Marcin Jakubowski

Marcin Jakubowski

Marcin Jakubowski is a Polish-American who came to the U.S. from Poland as a child. He graduated with honors from Princeton and earned his Ph.D. in fusion physics from the University of Wisconsin. Frustrated with the lack of relevance to pressing world issues in his education, he founded Open Source Ecology in 2003 in order to make closed-loop manufacturing a reality. He is now working on open-source blueprints for civilization - the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS)— an open source tool set of 50 industrial machines necessary to create a small civilization with modern comforts. His goal is to create the next economy - the open source economy. His work has been recognized as a TED Senior Fellow, in Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2012, as a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, and a White House Champion of Change in 2013.

Hosts

Jason van Gumster

Jason van Gumster

“I make stuff. I make stuff up. On occasion, I stuff-up what I make. I don’t do much stuff with make-up… though I’m not above trying. I work in all kinds of media: words, animation, ink, coffee, wood, video. And, of course, I’m really passionate about open source and open content, so that’s what I talk about in this show. Books I’ve written and other creative experiments I’ve made can be seen on monsterjavaguns.com.”