Erik's Blog: Discussing IT, personal fabrication and a new and better world - Energy/sustainability

Camera phones as barcode readers: increased buying power

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:37:08 +0100

The digital and physical world were once separate. Now, there are more and more physical products with a link to the digital world. The extreme situation is that a product ID will have a link to its source code for fabrication on a personal fabricator or a nearby fabrication service bureau. But also on shorter notice, we will see a lot more convergence.

Consider it less than 2 years from now before a major fraction of the general public has a (camera enabled) phone with internet that can scan UPC/EAN bar-codes (or any bar code for that matter). Applications like 'CompareEverywhere' are already made.
It is nice to see that the android equipped phones (open source OS) have the hardware to quickly scan barcodes and look them up:

It is then completely possible to bypass the shop's AND manufacturers information push and read reviews, compare prices and find another store. This will increase the buying power (flattens the price surplus that shops can get away with charging), reduce the amount of biassed information we will use for buying. Future version of this application (on the phone) would soon know your 'eco preferences', whether to allow GMO food or not, constrains about diet (e.g. allergy information), etc. etc. The information that is provided will be peer-reviews that are managed similar to how Wikipedia is.

The radical change is not just 'more' information, but more accurate, fair information while enhancing the shopping experience (integrate with you shopping lists, integrate making the purchase (since you've already scanned the items)). It will be possible to apply this in the entire life cycle of a product: When you throw away a package of an item you don't want to run out of, you can scan the barcode and confirm a repurchase (adds it to the shopping list) and where applicable, recycling information is given (how to remove the battery, what plastics were used, etc.). Non-consumables could be added to eBay almost automatically, while requiring almost no manual work to make the entry, since details regarding standard products can be found via the UPC/EAN code.

If products can carry an ID, an online record of its 'history' can be made (e.g. in the physical markup language).

In fact, the software already exists and is open source and installable. For a J2ME (requires MIDP2) enabled camera phone you can download zebra crossing (zxing). Find it here: Google Code: ZXing

We will have more power to make our intentions (through purchase) influence corporate decisions. When organizations have not allowed an eco-audit for their products, you have the opportunity to choose other products.

This barcode reader innovation has the ability to reach everyone with a cell phone in a very short period of time, since its mostly a software upgrade and it has viral effects (it will spread by people seeing someone else use it in a store). Of course the applications will evolve. The interface will become more seamless like this:

Physical object generators!

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:24:21 +0100

Oskay, from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made this thing: a snow flake generator.

Remember: do not eat the yellow snow.

I absolutely love it! I'll tell you why... Not as much that we can now make snowflakes, but the fact that these application/generators are emerging!

Customization!

This is what customization is so powerful for, you have a 'meta-model' of a type of object that is unsuitable for 'one size fits all' mass-production. Keeping a variety on stock is expensive, and how many permutations do you get if you allow 2 choices for 8 aspects of an object? 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 = 2^8 = 256. These costs go up if you want to give more than just two choices. You need massive production runs and not to mention sales to earn back the costs of moulds or dies. Moreover, keeping a large variety in stock is expensive and you deal with inherently uncertain demand. What will you stock and how much? All permutations? Or will you base your up-front investment on sales forecasts that tend to be biased by either subjectivity or an over-dependence on historic data?

Sustainability?

I tagged this post with 'energy/sustainability' as well. Why? Because currently, there's massive over-production and dumping of products for which the sales were over-estimated. All the energy and material resources that are used are costs, for the manufacturer, but also for society as in so called "externalities".

Processing.org

What I also like is the choice for processing.org. I like processing since it could also directly control a RepRap 3D printer and/or laser cutter (with the serial library) and/or it could run as a design tool embedded in web pages. Actually, I've been meaning to create a generator myself, in order to create STL files based on simple parameters and a click & drag system. There's this library that I tried to implement, but I guess I dove in too deep into processing.org (for a first dive, that is).
This is the lib: http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/tag/stl/

BudgetDedicated's Sponsored Challenge

I'm co-founder of BudgetDedicated, who actively sponsor open source projects:
"We actively encourage and support an open-source ecosystem. We support businesses that create revenue around open-source software. We also encourage adoption of open standards. We supply bandwidth and a server for the official Wine repository, because we feel it is important to be able to switch to Linux and still run the few win32 programs you can't say goodbye to yet. We sponsor the RepRap project with bandwidth and a server (seeding torrents and hosting ISOs). BudgetDedicated is comitted to help making the RepRap project a success. We have also built our own RepRap. "

If anyone needs to have a server to experiment (for a combination of server an client side computing) on, we'd happily offer this capacity free of charge. My only demand is that the developed application is offered free of charge and under an (OSI approved) open source license. The server could be any Linux distribution you're familiar with. Another platform is possible but needs justification (especially windows, since it doesn't scale well/cheaply). I'd even try to find the time to help out with interfacing. It needs not be processing.org at the client-side: an AJAX based parametric modeler with a thicker server-side layer would also be great.

Oskay, thanks for taking this pioneering step and sharing it!

Michel Bauwens on peer production

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:51:59 +0100

Monday evening, I've been to a reading on peer production in Amsterdam (@ Waag Society). Besides the excellent talk, I met some wonderful pe op le as well! I had heard and read about the peer to peer foundation earlier, but didn't really dive into it then. Now, hearing Michel speak was really fascinating. He has the capacity to extract some generalizations about peer production that apply to much more than just open source software. In a way, it's more of a cultural change than any specific field to which an open, 'voluntary participation based' process is applied. Michel was able to clearly put the current state of affairs and developments in a historical context. This thought experiment allowed us to think much more out of the box, which is important since every person has a degree of paradigm lock-in. Paradigm lock-in can be attributed to the fact that it takes learning of a reference frame to start understanding things within this framework. If you want to understand the sames things from another perspective, we should have learnt both perspectives in parallel. Unlearning an older, tacit but consolidated mental model or reference frame is a low and hard process, which has to do with neuroplasticity. But let's not lose track of what I was talking about... I really welcome Michel's anthropological approach and like to integrate it with my own ideas and my experiences with open source.

What was interesting was that Michel was really hoping for peer production of material goods (as opposed to virtual goods) would become significant. We see this happening. Open source PowerLineComms, Private GSM networks, MP3 players, wearable electronics, game consoles, a multitude of embeddable electronics (controllers), robot controllers, alarm clocks, various gadgets, an open source EEG (measures brainwaves) and ECG, 3D printers, robot kits, etc. Most things vary from useful, to educational or plain fun, or any combination. Your plant's pot can now contain a module to send you an SMS in case your plant needs water. I think that 3D printing can create another wave of innovation and peer production. It's nice to see I'm not the only one who's convinced of the transformational power of technology and persistent benevolent people.

I may write more on this subject later, but now I have some other obligations to attend to.

Zeitgeist and paradigm shifts (possible solutions)

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:57:21 +0200

If you haven't seen Zeitgeist the Movie, go see it now (ps. you can turn of the Dutch subtitles by clicking on the CC button). It's free to watch online and you may copy it. It is a very thought-provoking documentary that dismisses many commonly held beliefs. It doesn't do this in a subtle way, but the style is motivating and the general idea is: don't just take the public image of what's going on for the truth. You should not take things Zeitgeist says as the truth either, look for this yourself. For example about the WTC being a controlled demolition, I have my doubts about that. I don't dismiss the possibility either, though. There's a lot of good information out their on the WTC on Wikipedia on the controlled demolition theory. I have no doubts that a lot of this were in reality not as the US government admits, but that's nothing new. Get used to the fact that the media misrepresent these issues. They can be influenced. But, you should form your own opinion. Be critical, there are many of bad arguments that are made to defend both theories. Also, get used to the fact that powerful people do really nasty things. I tend to seek for the 'good' in every person, but there's a lot of damage done by people pursuing their own interests blindly. An inaccurate interpretation of Adam Smith's theory says that it's in everyone's interest for everyone to pursue their own interests. In this interpretation the invisible hand, the market forces would regulate the system. This is not even what Adam Smith argued to be true, but now many people still defend this view. And they often do it by referring to the authority that Adam Smith had. Self-interest is bad. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently said: "In this sense, the fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism - it tells the world that this way of economic organization turns out not to be sustainable." If we want to be successful and have social wealth, we must start at society's foundation: trust. High trust societies are proved to function much better than low-trust societies. I read a major treatise on the subject of TRUST, it's extensive but very good). Besides a lot of evidence, it's common sense too. Society can achieve more when you trust and help each other.

Back to Zeitgeist. They do quite a lot of tricks to make things 'feel' like everything is evil from the bottom up. I am not so pessimistic, but there is no doubt that the current economic system is not the best system. You should be critical about how good it really is and look for alternatives. A more open, direct and transparent democracy would be much better. We should work towards an environment where sharing of ideas is promoted, not keeping ideas. Luckily these changes are happening as we speak, simply because people want it. People want to share. Open source hardware is getting bigger. This doesn't mean that there aren't many things that need to be resolved, so the scope of sharing can become much bigger.

Eric von Hippel of MIT states that: "In the case of open source software this is possible because innovations can be “produced” and distributed essentially for free on the web, software being an information rather than a physical product."
-- von Hippel, E., Horizontal innovation networks - by and for users, Industrial and Corporate Change Advance Access, published May 16, 2007, p. 22

Elsewhere he says:
"In a sense, hardware is becoming much more like software, up to the point where you actually fabricate an object," von Hippel says. "That's why you're starting to see open source techniques in hardware. Design is largely going to shift out from manufacturers to the communities."

RepRap and other open source fabbers are an important for distributed innovation of physical products. They will be important to this change and wil both precede and set the stage for nanotechnology, further down the road.

But the transition from the current 'scarcity based' economy to a resource (value) based one another is a major change. The addendum (Zeitgeist part two), focusses mostly on the financial system. It says that we should not support it. It then follows to explains the Venus Project. This is essentially a future design for cities where technology enables them to live in harmony, more or less free from work and most importantly: free from greed and corruption, because it's a world based on abundance instead of scarcity. Many of the ideas are strong and positive. They do not explain how to make this transition though. There is some critisism to the design. Independently of Zeitgeist, while looking for example of open source hardware I found out about a community called Factor E Farm. If we're thinking about open source, using it or perhaps even developing (like I am)... they are LIVING it. What's even more special, they're doing it now. That they're getting their hands dirty is by no means an indication that they don't have a plan. Their bigger plan is actually extensively thought through and documented.

I think that the Factor E Farm is a much better candidate to than the Venus project. Because it is an open source farm and its plans are actually being implemented as we speak. They live off the grid, are creating their own water supply based on a well that is made with open source plans. They've built an open source tractor, concentrated solar power applications, their own PV panels, growing seeds, making their own flour, open source housing (Hexayurt), etc. They also develop a hydraulic press to press pretty solid bricks from earth. Those can be used for construction. Sounds like fun and they have an excellent group that tinkers a lot and also gets a lot of results. As far as I can see all of their results are made open source and published. They've also identified RepRap and multimachine as being very useful. It would be a very interesting setting to have a RepRap over there. The video's are nice to watch and give you a quick impression of what they're doing. Many of the results are pretty recent. In other words, they're really busy making this happen. You should have a look at the movies on their blog here.

I think it has the ability to spread. I hope another site will arise in Europe. To be honest, my hands are itching... But for now I'll stick to the RepRap project, because through the RepRap, a similar decrease of dependence on outside suppliers is possible. Ecologically it is a major change, people can use their home-grown bioplastics (both biologically sourced and biodegradable). Or they can recycle waste plastic into useful products. Since we have nearly infinte amounts of waste...
I see a nice synergy where the RepRap is one of the early steps towards a more locally accountable and sustainable. More of the project plans should be 'encoded' in CAD files accompanying the plans. This make transferability across sites much easier. Distributed innovation is easy in software, but in hardware it's more complicated. The RepRap takes away major impediments of developing physical stuff collaboratively while physically dispersed.

3D printing a greener future: Pictures from the Green City Lab at PICNIC

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:30:53 +0200

The pictures of the green city lab are available at fablab.waag.org. All in all, it was a really fun and interesting event where I met may wonderful people!

[RepRap] NL: Energie en grondstoffenefficiëntie

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:13:22 +0200

Dit is een open oproep voor sponsoring.

Ik werk in een project om een 3D fabricagemethode beschikbaar te maken voor iedereen (The RepRap Project). Om het te zien als slechts een fabricagemethode is een understatement. Het is de wens en doelstelling om:

Terug te gaan naar een balans waarin weer een symbiose met de natuur kan ontstaan.
Deze balans wordt gezocht in productie van onschadelijke producten maar ook onschadelijk productiekapitaal, eliminatie van transport, etc.

Eindgebruikers weer autonomie bieden door zelf spullen te kunnen ontwerpen en fabriceren.
Dit bied speciale mogelijkheden omdat bedrijven produceren om winst te maken en niet in de eerste instantie het beste product te leveren. Vanuit dit paradigma wordt vaak een (bewust) inferieur product gemaakt. Veelgebruikte methoden van fabrikanten zoals het creëeren van een 'lock-in' op het product of de 'consumables' zoals papier en inkt, kunnen omzeild worden. Ook ingebouwde veroudering, en het introduceren van producten met uitgeschakelde features zal minder goed werken. Strategieën op basis van exclusiviteit (hoog prijssegment) zullen ook minder goed werken.

De RepRap en afgeleide projecten zullen een explosie van creativiteit en innovativiteit betekenen.
Productiecapaciteit wordt gedemocratiseerd en geglobaliseerd. Iemand in Azie kan ontwerpen maken voor iemand in Europa.

In de derde wereld en in moeilijk bereikbare gebieden is het heel fijn om een apparaat te hebben om ieder gewenst voorwerp zelf te kunnen produceren.
Een belangrijk bijkomend voordeel is dat een RepRap per product nagenoeg geen menselijke arbeid vereist. Hoogwaardige productie bied de derde wereld een weg naar betere welvaart een een sterkere lokale economie. We zorgen met de RepRap voor een afname in afhankelijkheid van relatief dure en beperkte import.

Het bieden van een mogelijkheid om veel te leren.
Momenteel is de RepRap printer met enige begeleiding te bouwen door een zeventienjarig kind. Vanaf het moment dat die af is, kan een kind zelf maken wat hij wil en uitvindingen delen met de wereld en meewerken aan uitvinden van anderen. Belangrijke vaardigheden zoals lezen en schrijven zou aangevuld mogen worden met het oplossen van problemen met eigen uitvindingen. Scholen hebben al interesse getoond voor RepRaps.

Waarschijnlijk bent u het met mij eens dat dit nobele doelstellingen zijn. Toch verzeker ik u dat wij niet alleen spreken maar er hard mee aan het werk zijn en continue successen boeken. Ik ben dan ook nooit van mening geweest dat de doelstellingen onredelijk of te ambitieus zijn, slechts dat het doorzettingsvermogen, tijd en geld van een grote groep vrijwilligers eist. Deze ondersteundende groep is groeiende en stop met name veel tijd en nieuwe vaardigheden in het project (zeer multidisciplinair). Ik zal het punt over de ecologische balans nog verder toelichten.

Onze doelstelling is om RepRappers (mensen met een RepRap machine) de mogelijkheid te bieden milieuvriendelijker te produceren dan via traditionele methoden mogelijk is. Twee plastics waar wij mee werken zijn PLA (polylactic acid) en polymorph. Beide zijn biologisch afbreekbaar, en polylactic acid is te maken door lactose te fermenteren. Van de laatste heb ik jou het paar sandalen laten zien.

Concreet ben ik van plan twee wedstrijden uit te schrijven. Eén prijs kan gewonnen worden door het ontwikkelen van een doordachte methode om materialen (in de eerste instantie plastics) uit huis-, tuin- en keukengebruik te kunnen hergebruiken als waardevolle productiebouwstoffen.
De andere prijs kan gewonnen worden door het ontwikkelen van een goede, eenvoudig uit te voeren methode, waarmee biologisch afbreekbare plastics geproduceerd kunnen worden op basis van zetmeel of lactose. De technieken bestaan, maar het vinden van een goed werkende methode die voor een 'leek' toepasbaar is, is nog best een uitdaging.

De prijs is geld van mij en andere sponsors (leden en overige mensen die achter onze doelstellingen staan) en kortingen op benodigdheden (zoals electronica) om de machine verder te verspreiden. Ook dient de prijs om gemaakte kosten te vergoeden. Vanaf dat moment heeft iedereen met een RepRap niet alleen gratis productiemateriaal, maar heeft het ook een afvalreductie als gevolg. Bovendien kan alles wat gemaakt wordt oneindig gerecycled worden. Voor polymeren bestaat deze mogelijkheid al lang, maar worden in de praktijk vrijwel alle plastics verbrand of gestort.

Ik ben met andere actieve leden in discussie wat de precieze criterea moeten zijn zodat we creativiteit minimaal beperken maar dat het toch resulteert in een globale reductie van schadelijk afval. Zelf ben ik, hoewel ik ook al veel tijd en geld in het project investeer, bereid om enkele honderden euro's extra als prijzengeld aan te bieden. Misschien vind u het interessant om zich bij dit initiatief aan te sluiten?

Verdere informatie is te vinden in de attachment en op de volgende internetpagina's:

RepRap Project Homepage
RepRap Main Blog
RepRap Gebruikers/Ontwikkelaars Blog

If you don't know how to fix it, don't break it...

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:55:24 +0200

Severn Suzuki speaking at UN Earth Summit 1992

Philanthropy or PR? B&M Gates foundation

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:32:52 +0200

Summary: Good returns from bad companies can cancel out the beneficial effects of grants.

Let me elaborate why I lost the last bit of respect for Bill Gates.

"Using the most recent data available, a Times tally showed that
hundreds of Gates Foundation investments — totaling at least $8.7
billion, or 41% of its assets, not including U.S. and foreign
government securities — have been in companies that countered the
foundation's charitable goals or socially concerned philosophy."

Source: LA Times January 2007.

I've always disliked the business practices of Microsoft. It's not
per sé that they try to do 'evil', it's something that bigger
corporations tend to do to satisfy their shareholders. Microsoft is one
of the biggest of such companies. Especially in a position of a
monopoly, it is easy to abuse it as far as legally and illegally
(market vs. settlement charges) profitable. I have always been under
the assumption that Bill Gates 'understood' that there was no way back,
and in overal it contributed to the wealth of the world. So perhaps it
may have been considered as a lesser evil.

The whole problem I still have is that they are exactly in a position
to make a profound change in the world for the better, but they don't.

When I read the following LA Times article, I was shocked. It can be very, very much doubted how beneficial the Bill & Melinda gates foundation actually is to the world. Moreover, they could be very beneficial if they would 'Put their money where their mouth is'.
Their foundation is essentially a split between 'doing good' and making
the maximum profit from investments to increase the wealth of the
organization. While this split seems innocent, the net effect of the
foundation may be negative for the world. Again, what they COULD do,
is actively try to influence the companies they invest in. A quote from
the article:

"Leadership, however, is open to the Gates Foundation. It has unique
power to move the debate, said Bauer, of Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors. If Gates adopted mission-related investing, Bauer said in an
interview, the shift in the world of philanthropy would be "seismic.""

Source: Ibid p. 3. (What's Ibid?)

What happens when you try to do good at one side, and ignorantly try
to make money with major externalities. Externalities that are the
eufemism for polluting abroad on a scale that we would never allow
here. Financially weak governments can complain, but have too little
influcence.

"In 2002, a study found that more than half of the children at a school
in nearby Merebank suffered asthma — one of the highest rates in
scientific literature. A second study, published last year, found
serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of
children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide
and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies
in which the Gates Foundation was invested."
Source: Op loc.

Again, just like Microsoft, they are the biggest and they could make
the most significant difference in the world. They seem to be unaware
that mutual funds that do ethical investment do not underperform, even
while these funds have less posibility to diversify (source: from the
same article).

When medicine are protected by the same legal rules as software, it
is murder if we do nothing to still make it available to the poorest of
the world. If we have systems that protect our sacred 'innovation',
this means that we have to have exceptions for those cases where lives
and our humanity it at stake. The problem is, those cases are no
exception. The majority of disease is in third world countries.

I think it is aweful that many people don't know about the darker
side of philanthropy. I know that many people defend Bill gates because
of this initiative. If you do not practice what you preach, you do not
deserve this kind of defence. That's PR (Public Relations), not
philanthropy.

Even some of the grants that were supposed to be 'for the good', have their sidemarks. The second article is about financing "predatory lending". It's the whole loans sector that is seen as suspect by a coalition of 240 nonprofits and public agencies that studies financial agencies. They get away with, but settlements of hundreds of millions of dollars are not rare. Imagine the amout they actually forced out of their customers. Still, Gates invested at least $367 million.

On January 11 2007, the LA Times reports that the Foundation said that they would reevalutate their investments.

Then, on January 13th they said that they would not change their practice. (source 1 and 2)

Continue reading "Philanthropy or PR? B&M Gates foundation"

An Inconvenient Thruth

nospam@example.com (Erik de Bruijn) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:19:31 +0100

Every time I head Al Gore speak I feel sorry for the world that he wasn't elected for President (or at least recognized as elected). These are some must see videos!

Al Gore on TED. Great presentation and very fun to watch on Google Video

Al Gore on Charlie Rose on Google Video

Charlie Rose - Alternative Energy / Internet Technology on Google Video