[ExI] Manufacturing Project

Wed May 28 00:16:33 UTC 2008

The following is a description of a project I've been meaning to 
describe in more detail to extropy-chat. I hope this helps sheds some 
light. I'd appreciate feedback, especially on presentation, which I 
might obsess over a bit. Discussion would be good too.

I am building a free/open automated manufacturing (making) system. I'll 
explain what this means in a moment. I'm in desperate need of more 
computers, monitors, machines, materials ('junk'), or anything that can 
be considered to interface computers to the outside world, even 
volunteers. It's a way to aggregate self-transformational progress.

I've had a paragraph up on my website for a while:
http://heybryan.org/exp.html
> What was originally 'only' an an attempt at bruteforcing the design
> of macroscale kinematic self-replicating machines has now grown into
> a broader project that is uniting the paired visions of an open
> knowledge (recipe) database/repository (OSCOMAK, OSEP, SKDB, etc.)
> with the vision of automated crawling of massive material databases
> geared towards finding designs that represent self-replication. This
> metarepository project provides an aggregation framework to
> physically "ground" the semantic web to reality, such as through
> physical fabricational recipes -- a "design compiler" with humble
> origins as xxDNA; ultimately this is a global, distributed,
> asynchronous repository paired with fabricational automation that
> provides, in a sense, a 'cybernetic circuit' to pull all of our
> combined "virtual efforts" together, down-to-earth, for increasingly
> real work -- indeed, discovering the future by creating it. Examples
> of potential projects within this metarepo would include debian
> (review), vehicles, wafers, in vitro meat pods, spaceships, DNA
> synthesizers, etc. Technically, the underlying framework is git +
> ikiwiki + agx-get + ATLAS-L architecture re: knowledge nugget
> (knugget) producers, brokers, and users as described by jer -- much
> of this architecture is already in place with such technologies as
> YAML, python, HTTP, essentially the entire work done by GNU and the
> subsequent linux distribution communities. Simultaneously, bottom-up
> diffusion is pointing this direction as it is. The implementation is
> not a matter of difficulty but rather a matter of aggregating the
> combined efforts of programmers, scientists, engineers, etc. All of
> the puzzle pieces are already out there and are generally well
> understood. the implications of developing a self-replicating machine
> are  broader than such a distributed, voluntary repository; 
> theoretically, programmable self-replicating machines mean exponential 
> growth that, if indeed open and free, will be our bridge from an age 
> of scarcity economics to an era of post-scarcity, an open singularity. 
> All that's left is crossing the bridge, uniting 'physical' 
> and 'virtual' in both computational and fabricational recursion.     
... but I admit that this is maybe too dense. 

And in another context, in prepration for attendance to ISDC2008: 
http://heybryan.org/2008-05-09.html
... but I admit that this too is rather long, and doesn't provide 
analysis.

Since I've sourced most of this stuff in the above two links, I figure 
that -- perhaps in an attempt to move extropy-chat back to the 'strong 
intellectual firepower' [reviewing the available content from the 
internet and research literature etc.] that Amara mentioned recently, 
two or three emails ago -- that those who are interested can go dig 
around to find the sources and the analogies that I am working off of. 
I won't do what I did in 2008-05-09.html again. That was somewhat of a 
mistake. So I'll just assume we can all read here and acquire contexts 
that we hadn't previously made accessible to ourselves ...

But I will start by citing some essays that I link to in exp.html:

	Eric Hunting on the manufacturing ecology
http://heybryan.org/manufacturing_ecology.html
	The Marginilization of Scarcity (Robert Levin)
http://www.openverse.com/~dtinker/agalmics.html
	A rant on financial obesity (Paul Fernhout)
http://tinyurl.com/6echpe
	On funding post-scarcity digital public works (Paul Fernhout)
http://tinyurl.com/5r8m28
	Critique of Ray's The Singularity is Near via emails
http://heybryan.org/fernhout/

== The way of the sharing programmer ==

I haven't seen a true anthropological introduction to the social 
dynamics of F/OSS programmers and how it is that they start on their 
particular path, or how they contribute to the software projects. I'm 
still not entirely sure, in truth. But it's the same pattern applied 
all over the place, as exhibited by the open project farm over at 
Sourceforge, or the ohlo and krugle and Google codesearch utilities 
that track contributors and so on. They contribute code, they 'push' 
their changes (it's a command called push), people squawk and test and 
figure out what's going on and then settle various issues, etc. Some 
times people fork the projects entirely. Anyway, as a whole, when you 
select the contributions of tens of thousands of programmers, you get 
high quality material, since you're making a coherent work out of 
otherwise diverging components. The debian operating system project 
illustrates this rather well. It's mostly social facilitation as well 
as programming on the underlying framework, but the facilitation is 
what counts the most in my opinion. A paper that documents it:
https://penta.debconf.org/~joerg/attachments/33-measuring_etch_slides.pdf

The social facilitation takes form in a simple command that all debian 
or ubuntu users can run called 'apt-get'. It allows them to immediately 
download an open source software package. Chances are, if the software 
package is widely known to the extent that a new user is acquiring it, 
that debian already has it in the repositories. And if the user isn't a 
newbie, isn't new to it, then he'll know how to acquire and install the 
software package without the help of apt-get, so it works out for him 
too. What this allows for, in a broader context, is many many users 
that download and install the software that are able to immediately 
take advantage of their hardware in whatever way they want, they can 
download software with minimal effort ("standing on the shoulders of 
giants"). It's the first impression and impact factor. It shows how 
serious we are, and it shows the efficiency of it all.

The manufacturing project I've been working on does this for tools, for 
automation, for experimentation, manufacturing, all of it. Users would 
be able to type out simple commands and come back maybe hours later to 
find new machines to make what they need to become better or otherwise 
do what they want. Of course, at the moment this project is just a 
seedling, not encompassing those aspects entirely yet, simply because 
it takes a village to raise a child (or project). What if instead of 
having to retool a shop, or buy expensive machinery, we could all use a 
techshop? Or what if we could physically 'download' fabrication 
technology like a von Neumann machine or RepRap (which doesn't quite 
work yet as intended)?

It'd be a practical guide to self-transformation from the ground up, 
physically embodied -- like giving somebody a helping hand. The 
materials and resources will not cost as long as we can ground it in 
philanthropic intentions, in resources that we can scrounge up until we 
can tap new mines and other sources that aren't yet flagged for 
scarcity-centric ideologists. 

"If you give a man a fish, he is fed for a night.
	If you teach a man to fish, he is fed for the rest of his life."
If you 'uplift' a person (perhaps against his will unfortunately) ... 
versus empowering the individual ...

You'd be able to make your medicines, your biotech, your improved 
computers, just without the painful 'bootup' steps that it takes to get 
a fabrication lab runinng, etc.

== How far does it all go? ==

There's no reason that we can't have http://techshop.ws/ or barcamps and 
unconferences geared towards the public diffusion of manufacturing 
technology and empowering technology. It'd have to involve the use of a 
fabrication laboratory, maybe something the size of a common garage or 
maybe something larger -- I don't have any idea on size but thanks to 
the self-optimizing nature of the project it can fix itself -- and 
these machine shops will have to make the parts for a new machine shop, 
which would be given to the next person, who can then do the same and 
maybe also contribute new parts and components to the manufacturing 
project behind the scenes, which I call 'SKDB' or Societal Engineering 
Knowledge Database. 

The underlying packaging system is based off of what I would describe as 
buckets of files (like tar or zip) but with semantic metadata that 
clearly outlines how it fits together with other projects. This will 
mean expressing relationships to other systems, material requirements, 
and the input/output of the physical contraption; it's a "how to" 
database, so one of the requirements is an internal file that programs 
machines on how to make the object. The trick is making sure you have 
those machines, so if you follow the dependency requirements (just like 
in debian) you will be able to arrive at the root dependency, perhaps 
something that you might have to make, that will catalyze a chain 
reaction of tools that can build up to whatever it is that you are 
installing. 

As for the projects that would go into the database, I'm personally 
adding brain implants, rockets, microprocessors, alternative computing 
technologies (simple / giant vacuum tubes, graphene, etc.), 
neurochemical growth kits, stuff useful in scientific experimentation 
and its automation, etc. But also projects including electric vehicles, 
or space ships, or organ farms. All of that. 

== Too broad? ==

Nope, it's actually not too broad since the overall goal is the eventual 
design of a kinematic self-replicating machine. From my overview of the 
literature on the topic, there's no actual desgin of a KSRM, although 
some people have come close. The way that this will be done will be via 
connecting manufacturing units/processes together, and then finding 
the 'dependency loops' via an intense computational search, this is 
where studies in computer science and the (not so) lonely traveling 
salesman come in to play. 

All of this data doesn't have to be (and it will not be) hosted on the 
same server. It's just like open source software projects -- they are 
hosted by the programmers that work on them. They find various ways to 
set up machines to make it happen. And then somebody comes along (like 
debian) to aggregate it together.
^ I'm constructing a multi-TB server for this purpose.

The tradition of programming has been around for a while longer than the 
do-it-yourself automated manufacturing groups, yes. So that's one of 
the issues that needs some work with SKDB and OSCOMAK: not only is it 
about bootstrapping the aggregation community to make it all fit and be 
automated, but we also have to help train individuals in python and 
YAML and hacking cupsd as a way to manage manufacturing equipment wired 
up to linux boxes etc. Which can get overwhelming, but it can be done.

== Philanthropic bootstrapping ==

Where do we begin with this sort of manufacturing project? How do we do 
the biotech that we so very much want to see? The chemicals themselves, 
these cost lots of money, even though we know that fundamentally the 
atoms around us in abundance are what we could use, it's all 'trapped 
information'. So there are two main options:
	(1) derive it all ourselves
	(2) move knowledge/machines into the project via philanthropic sources.

Even if we could get machines from manufacturing companies, and help 
them update their infrastructure as an exchange or something, there's 
still the materials/resources problem. That too has to be solved, and 
my main suggestion is rockets to go mine asteroids or the moon, and 
these rockets/miners schematics will be within the SKDB as well, and 
anybody else can make the ships required to get resources, and anybody 
could then freely distribute the materials to whoever they want, 
perhaps to whoever simply asks. Anything else involving ownership is 
close to totalitarian regimes. 

== Progress ==

The guys that I am working with are in #hplusroadmap on freenode.
	http://freenode.net/
	http://irchelp.org/
And there's also the hplusroadmap mailing list:
http://heybryan.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hplusroadmap
And there's also OpenVirgle where some messages have been sent:
http://openvirgle.net/

Paul, Ben and I thought that a good first project might be origami, to 
show the idea of using a manufacturing tool -- a printer -- to 
physically ink out schematics, and then human hands to follow the 
instructions and make the folds (papekura). I, uh, eventually, realized 
that I was spending far too many hours on blender, a 3D modeling 
software package, mostly because of the ridiculously high learning 
curve. As an example, the printer would be what would be in SKDB, not 
the 3D object itself, the exact instance -- that's more a runtime 
configuration in my opinion, not an actual manufacturing process ("of 
being an object" heh').

So where is the whole project? Still needing some programmers to bridge 
various gaps (like I'm working on agx-get.py, the apt-get clone but for 
the simplified framework (lots of legacy stuff removed)). But in all 
honesty, there's also the need to start discussing the metadata file 
formats, the ones that would specify projects and their relations to 
others, properties and terms that are specific to that context. This is 
done very simply via writing classes in python, since the whole system 
is based on the object serialization model and distribution of the code 
to run it on others' systems.
	For example, I'm sure I don't know enough about copper smelting 
processes, or memristor fabrication processes, and perhaps somebody 
else is, ...

Recently it came to my attention the existence of http://cd3wd.com/ -- a 
13 GB collection of third-world development information from the UN but 
finally digtiized and put up on the internet by Alex Weirr. Also 
elsewhere on the internet as The Humanity CD Project. But it's just 
static information. All of us, we all have to spend so much time 
reading it to get value out of it, when in truth instead of just a CD 
we could give much more -- automation, options, etc. Something more 
energetic (functional) that really does represent 'humanity' ;-).

Same applies for self-transformation tech.

- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/