We are hot on the pursuit of a powerful 2-minute Explainer Video about the GVCS, which may be used not only to clarify the concept in general, but which may also assist in: (1), our application to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; (2), recruiting of 1000 True Fans; (3) Kickstarter, and others. We have the support of Encyclopedia Pictura in this venture.

We’ve been told that a lot of our material right now could be misunderstood as too ‘collapse-centric’ for many – so we want the video to be as open to different political stripes as it possibly can be without compromising the core concepts. When we are ready with the video, we will reach out to a number of venues with an invitation to participate in a media blitz with the goal of getting the True Fans and other campaigns moving in a big way.

The following is a technical description of the GVCS, which is intended to be a point of departure for writing a video script. This is a first cut, and we’ll follow the evolution of this statement in the responses to this post, so please comment.

GVCS Technical Description: The GVCS is an open source tool set of hardware and software sufficient for creating sustainable and adaptable (resilient), post-scarcity communities. The GVCS aims to create advanced civilization based on open source, global information flows, and localized material resources and skills (cf. material resources of the entire globe). To achieve this, we focus on unleashing key production processes (industries) to a smaller scale – by converting existing means of production to their improved, open source counterparts. The optimizations sought in the physical products and infrastructures used by society include: (1), integrated, lifetime, modular, scalable, systems design (2), simplicity and transparency; (3), 5-10-fold reduction in the cost of living; (4) 10-fold decrease in the energy used by civilization; (5) internalizatoin of responsibility for political consequences. The GVCS concept utilizes proven principles of division of labor, flexible and digital fabrication, and open business models – for distributing economically-significant means of production. By focusing on strategic use of non-strategic, local resources – enabled by modern technology – the GVCS promotes the creation of autonomous economies, decoupled from geopolitical compromise by design. The GVCS is merely a practical attempt at optimizing human organization towards an effective scale – by availing the infrastructure technologies, necessary skill sets, documentation, and training necessary for this task. The application of the GVCS is the creation of a network of globally-connected, parallel economies – such that they constitute realistic, model options for living and working for anyone interested in a more healthy, balanced, integrated, and meaningful lifestyle. Via division of labor and unleashed productivity, the GVCS is meant to enable groups of as little as 4 people (custom fabricator, architect/builder, agroecologist, and energy engineer) to guarantee their prosperity. This group may provide 100% of the food, fuel, energy, and housing needs from on-site resources in 2 hours per day of labor – as a material foundation towards an unprecedented quality of life and unleashed creativity. This prosperity package is intended to work up to the unit scale of a few hundred people per community, where multiple units of this scale constitute larger human settlements.

The GVCS is currently in a globally-collaborative development phase, with 1 full product release out of a basic package of 40. The 40-piece tool set includes an open source fab lab, RepLab, which allows new communities to build their equipment base from scratch at the cost of scrap steel and human labor – starting with an investment of approximately $20k in the RepLab tools. While the initial set of the 40 technologies is well bounded – technological recursion may be pursued by applying RepLab to produce not only the technologies themselves – but also their components, and finally, the feed-stocks for those components. The eventual goal is using on-site resources to produce high-appropriate-technology civilization, where global trade is an option, not a necessity. The recursion may extend up to processes such as smelting of aluminum from clay, or smelting of silicon from sand – for boot-strapping self-replicability of the entire package without the need for external capitalization. The main present challenge is clarifying the above possibility to gain support.

The above is made feasible by the standard 5-10-fold cost reduction of open source economic development, as well as the 10-fold energy requirement decrease inherent to lifetime/systems design of physical infrastructures. In particular, solar concentrator power energy and renewable biomass energy thus become feasible throughout most of the world as a foundation for modern civilization. With widely-available, decent(ralized) energy – the above technological capacity is made possible – literally for turning ‘dirt and sticks’ into the substance of advanced civilization.

The GVCS is designed to be applicable in any location where soil, sunshine, and water are found. The completion of the GVCS introduces the possibility of closing the industrial divide between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds.The GVCS is a radical deperture whereby individuals are empowered to take responsibility for the world around them – as creators instead of consumers- as a prerequisite for evolving to freedom.

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Categories: 1000 True Fans - 1000 Global Villages, Global Village Construction Set

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