Difference between revisions of "User:CharlesC"

Revision as of 22:25, 29 October 2006

I live in England and currently work as a senior research engineer for Dyson Ltd. I have always been interested in what becomes possible with new technology and new thinking. It is wonderful when new methods cull lots of complexity and enable things that were not previously possible.

I'm not a pure neophile and have a huge appreciation for pre-digital era methods, and would actually be quite happy living a simple(ish) rural life...

What led me to creating this website

After thinking for a long time about the effect that ever increasingly sophisticated automation would have on our society, I came to the logical conclusion that we would be able to create an unprecendented abundance of material items which ultimately only depends on the availability of matter and energy. And fortunately, despite the constant doom and gloom in the press about the way we do things currently, the Earth actually has vast amounts of both.

This, combined with increasing energy efficiency and material recycling, means we should be able to provide very high standards of living for every person on the planet while minimising our impact on the evironment. Sounds too good to be true doesn't it?

Based on human nature, I believe that if people are exposed to potentially vast abundance then materialism will become irrelevant and we should enter an era of unmaterialistic post-scarcity. Quality will then reign over quantity. Labour isn't an issue because this is the result of advanced automation - if we need greater capacity, we build more machinery to do the job. We use machines to do things machines are good at and we free people up to do things people are good at (and enjoy doing).

At the turn of the millenium while I was coming to this conclusion, I also discovered the free software / open source movement and it struck me fairly soon after that this method of collaboration seems well suited to designing physical artifacts and systems too. This then gives us the mechanism to design efficient goods, and the automated systems, described in the scenario above. 'Open design', as it might be called, also has the benefits of being a non-controlling, non-proprietary system and encourages people to join in. It is inclusive to anyone who wants to be part of the process and doesn't have the conflict of interest that many companies face of trying to produce competitive goods while at the same time trying to maximise profits.

Because these concepts seem to have so much potential in helping to overcome many of the problems that humanity faces at the moment, I put this website together a) to help crystalise my thoughts and b) to give it wider exposure to anyone who might be interested. And because it is a wiki it gives the potential for others to help evolve the ideas and discuss other things that become possible as a result.

(How might this become possible and what will people do?)

(If money is a concept based on scarcity, then what will become of it?)

• Notes