Your task is a thankless one, and the movement will grow slowly. Even after large corporations were making effective use of open source software for many years, the products of that movement were ridiculed. Changing culture, those patterns of behavior which get picked up from the environment and fixed in the brian, takes time and dedication.

We’re all different and in different circumstances. It’s good that some cover interesting ground, making it easier for the next wave of people.

Also, the future is quite difficult to predict, at least in detail. So it’s best to have several options ready.

I’d be glad to see even a fraction of OSE’s intentions come true, step by step, within the next couple of years. OSE can then be part of the future.

Modularity is good as a key feature: just as one example, the CNC table torch may end up working with solar, gassified wood, algae, or whatever.

For starters you are talking about solar based communities, fueled either directly through the sun, or indirectly through biomass and wind. No one has yet demostrated the ability to “prosper” as you so often talk about on these energy sources, let alone compete economically versus fossil fueled industries (big ag, manufacturing ect). I suspect that this just isn’t as easy as we imagine nor as pleasant and unfortunately we may not make the shift until sheer neccesity.

Less abstractly most everyone I know has bills, loans ect that they are obligated to. Its the very rare person who is ready willing, and able to invest there time and hard efforts for no garaunteed return.

Yes we as a country and people need to invest in efforts such as OSE, desperately so, but it also is not suprising to me that we aren’t. I suspect that these investments won’t happen until conditions force us to reorganize our lives out of necessity.

It might be more useful to think of it in terms of people not being *able* to be fully responsible. It’s not just an issue of willingness. I think of humans as simply animals which have just barely passed the threshold of self-consciousness. Our ability to reason and focus our attention is terribly limited, and we are creatures of habit. We should accept our limitations (that this is just the nature of the human brain) and work with this problem in mind.

That is why the concepts of open source and automation are so very important. If any one person makes observations about how the world works or constructs tools to automate labor or calculation, these need to be made available to everyone. That is the only way we will make significant progress as a species. Mental focus which is spent meeting basic needs cannot be used to explore new ideas. Each idea shared becomes the seed for the next new idea. We should endeavor to plant as many seeds as possible.

It must be said that our culture is undoubtedly responsible for a great deal of our ‘stupidity’. If we were all given an education more focused on the foundations of life, we could engage our world in a more constructive manner. Every child should be taught how to grow food, husband animals, build homes, program computers, etc. Instead, we are taught how to worship imaginary beings, scam each other for the virtual resource of money, and idolize those who play meaningless, competitive games.