Survey of Commons-Based Peer Production of Physical Goods

Source

• Paper: Commons-based Peer-Production of Physical Goods. Is there Room for a Hybrid Innovation Ecology? By Peter Troxler, Square One, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

URL = http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Troxler-Paper.pdf

Overview graphic: see also Figure 1: An attempt at mapping the Fabbing world, page 4 of the document

Excerpt

Peter Troxler:

"Balka et al. went to great length to collect examples of open source hardware projects through their site http://open-innovation-projects.org/ which they then used as basis for their quantitative studies (2009, 2010). They find, ‘that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source.’ (2009, p. 22), but also that that ‘open parts strategies in open design are crafted at the component level, rather than the level of the entire design’ (2010, p. 11) and that ‘the degree of openness differs significantly between software and hardware components, in the sense that software is more transparent, accessible, and replicable than hardware’ (ibid.).

Similarly, Torrone and Fried (2010) collected 13 examples of companies that are selling open source hardware and creating some kind of community around them. Those companies together, the authors estimate, generate a turnover of about US$ 50m. The authors reckon that there are currently about 200 open source hardware projects of this kind. They project the open source hardware community to reach US$ 1b by 2015. Some of these communities have indeed seen an exponential growth recently, e.g. the RepRap community (Rhys et al. 2010).

Next to these single-aim or single-product projects there are other initiatives promoting commons-based peer production mainly through the sharing of designs and the stimulation of ‘making things’, be it for the fun of it (e.g. the Maker Faire in the USA, the magazines Make or Craft), for easy sharing, distribution and promotion (e.g. Ponoko, Shapeways, Thingiverse), or for the purpose of more serious or more ambitious social experiments, such as the Open Source Ecology with their experimental facility Factor E Farm (Dolittle, 2008).

Finally, there are other initiatives of commons-based peer production that could be summarized under the heading of ‘shared machine shops’ (Hess, 1979). These workshops are typically equipped with hand tools and relatively inexpensive fabrication machines (e.g. laser cutter, router, 3D mills). Users produce two- and three-dimensional things that once could only be made using equipment costing hundreds of thousands of Euros. They use digital drawings and open-source software to control the machines, or they build electronic circuits and gadgets.

Hackerspaces define themselves ‘as community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects’ (Hackerspaces, 2010). Emerging from the counter culture movement (Grenzfurthner & Schneider, 2009), they are ‘place[s] where people can learn about technology and science outside the confines of work or school’ (Farr, 2009). Activities in hacker spaces evolve around computers and technology, and digital or electronic art. Hackerspaces are founded as local initiatives following a common pattern, becoming a hacker space is predominantly self declaratory. The Hackerspaces ecosystem comprises some 400 member locations, of which roughly half are either dormant or under construction (Hackerspaces, 2010a). Collaboration between Hackerspaces has recently begun in the shape of so called ‘hackatlons’ that seem not to extend beyond showing activity at the hacker spaces taking part (Hackerspaces, 2010b).

100k-Garages is ‘is a community of workshops with digital fabrication tools for precisely cutting, machining, drilling, or sculpting the parts for your project or product, in all kinds of materials, in a shop or garage near you’ (100kGarages, 2010), supported by machine manufacturer ShopBot and the design sharing platform Ponoko. Most of these workshops are located in the U.S.A. and Canada (about 180), with five shops in Europe and two in Australia. As opposed to the other examples, 100k-Garages are providing a professional manufacturing service, rather than offering shop access to makers.

TechShop is a group of workshops that are equipped with typical machine shop tools (welding stations, laser cutters, milling machines) and corresponding design software. Access to the workshop is through monthly or yearly membership, and courses on how to use the tools are offered, too. TechShop started in the California Bay Area, and is present in five more cities around the U.S.A. (TechShop, 2010). Fab Lab, short for fabrication laboratory, is another global initiative with a growing number of locations around the world. Fab Labs are more conceptually rooted as they emerged from an MIT course entitled ‘How To Make (almost) Anything’ (Gershenfeld, 2005). While there is no formal procedure on how to become a Fab Lab, the process is monitored by the MIT, and the MIT maintains a list of all Fab Labs worldwide. At the moment of writing, the Fab Lab community comprises 45 labs, with another 45 to 50 labs to open in the not too distant future. There are a few collaborative projects within the community, and a number of initiatives to exchange designs and experience between the labs. Similar to the hackatlons, but on a more structural basis, all the labs around the world are in contact with each other through a common video conferencing system hosted at the MIT which is used for ad-hoc meetings, scheduled conferences and the delivery of the Fab Academy training programme.

In literature, there is a number of examples of Fab Lab projects. Mikhak et al. (2002) report on projects in India, at Vigyan Ashram Fab Lab just outside the village of Pabal in Maharashtra, and at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology in San Jose, Costa Rica. The India projects are about developing controller boards to do more accurate timing of the diesel engines they use to generate electrical power, and developing devices to monitor milk quality not at the collection centres and the processing plants, but at producer level. The Costa Rican projects evolve around wireless sensing modules for agricultural, educational and medical applications, for example the monitoring of a certain skin condition in a rural village.

Gershenfeld (2005) lists examples of what students at MIT made in his course ‘how to make (almost) anything’, including a bag that collects and replays screams, a computer interface for parrots that can be controlled by a bird's beak, a personalised bike frame, a cow-powered generator, an alarm clock that needs to be wrestled to make it turn off, and a defensive dress that protects its wearer's personal space. Gjengedal (2006) reports on the early projects at the Norwegian MIT Fab Lab at Solvik farm in Lyngen: the ‘electronic shepard’ (sic) project that used telecom equipment to track sheep in the mountains, the ‘helmet wiper’ for clearing the face shield in the rain, the ‘wideband antenna’ for the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio band, and the , the ‘Internet 0’ project (a low bandwidth Internet protocol), the ‘perfect antenna’, and the ‘local position system’ for positioning of robots in the lab.

Pfeiffer (2009) describes her own experiments and projects in the context of distributed digital design; the experiments being Lasercut News, Digital Color Studies & Pixilated Images, Lasercut Screen, and Lasercut Bracelets (which she sold at a local shop), the projects: Distorted Chair and Asperatus Tile.

Hackerspaces, per their name and definition, build on commons-based principles. 100k-Garages and TechShops use dedicated platforms to share (final) designs, yet their commitment to a commons-based peer production philosophy seems to be somewhat weaker. Fab Labs’ commitment to some kind of commons is more explicit. The Fab Charter, to which all Fab Labs subscribe, states, that ‘designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use although intellectual property can be protected however you choose’. And the Charter continues ‘commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs but they must not conflict with open access, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success’ (Fab Charter, 2007)." (http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Troxler-Paper.pdf)