Difference between revisions of "User:CharlesC"

Revision as of 20:36, 30 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 would describe myself as a generalist with a fairly broad interest and knowledge of technology and engineering, which helps me to glimpse the emerging bigger picture.

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

This website is still in its early stages, I am trying to create a skeleton for all the top level concepts involved and I'm slowly fleshing them out. So there may well be pages where things may not make much sense through lack of detail. Please bear with me!

What led me to these ideas

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 unprecedented 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 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 environment. 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 millennium 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 artefacts 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 crystallise 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.

I feel the two major concepts of open design and self-repairing automation are likely to be two key components in the next phase of our civilisation, so this website is dedicated to those two subjects and the possibilities they subsequently enable, as well as other aspects crucial to our survival and progression.