Creator Co-Op

Thought of the day:

There should be new kind of business/co-op/makerspace/school/factory/thinktank. Initial working names are Creator Co-op or Invention Village.

There are a few big ideas stirring around for me in this. I'm just going to list the disparate pieces, and then try to establish how they relate.

One is that great things happen when creative people get together in community - as Paul Graham says in his fantastic piece "Taste":

Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems. 

The next piece comes from a fantasy novel, specifically, Patrick Rothfuss' peerless debut, The Name of the Wind. The idea I like is the Artificery which is part of the University in the book. Students can come in and build magical items from plans, according to their level of ability. Customers come to buy things there, and students earn a commission of 60% of the purchase price. Inventors can create plans, and if you create the first item of its kind, you get a share of the sale price on any copies sold thereafter. Presumably the University takes a cut as well.

Another interesting piece from fiction: Fire Star, a quirky sci-fi that contains some very novel (if overly optimistic) ideas about bringing free-market economics into the classroom - basically, giving students a chance to earn money and start businesses as part of their education.

I've also always loved the model of FreeGeek, "helping the needy get nerdy". They get computers donated, install Linux, and then sell them off at cheap prices. It's like a nerdy thrift store, except there's a big education component and they allow anybody to come in off the street and volunteer for a few hours to earn a computer.

An important consideration: the Open Source "economy", which has produced Linux, a freely available modern version of which can be valued at over $10 billion dollars, at least in terms of the cost to replicate it if you paid programmers to do so.

A counter-point, or perhaps supporting piece: The fact that free-market forces, judging by history, have probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other system yet devised.

Other, minor pieces - the advent of rapid prototyping and other maker technologies, the "gig economy", crowd-sourced investing.

Put it all together and what I envision is this:

A space that allows people with skills and equipment to connect and help one another. An amateur videographer meets with an artist with a design idea, and an engineer with a 3D printer. These people can design a product, market it, fund it, and produce it.

A space that sells its creations - a storefront.

A space that allows people to earn creations, via volunteering.

A place that encourages the open source spirit of volunteerism and the economy of share and share alike.

A space where anybody can come in and earn a few dollars - assemble some kits, ship some merch, man the front desk, build a computer, promote something on instagram.

How is this different from FreeGeek? A focus on makers, not just computers.
How is this different from a makerspace? A focus on making products to sell, not just to show off.
How is this different from a school? People aren't here just to produce pointless work and go through the motions.
How is this different from a startup incubator? It doesn't have to be a grand project (although it can be). It doesn't have to be grossly profitable.
How is this different from a standard business? Well, because the point isn't to earn money for shareholders, the point is to provide an environment where things can be made, ideas can be formed, skills can be learned.
How do you fund it? Selling the products, for one. But how, exactly?

• I think there should be a new kind of economics, and this is where the gig economy (and maybe some other things) come in. First of all, the main point isn't to get rich quick, although there would be potential for some people to earn basic income here. The point is that people want to create. Some people want to create, even for non-monetary reasons - just because they love the act itself, or because they have a personal interest in seeing a product created, or because they are trying to build skills for personal development.
• The commission model of the University is excellent inspiration - pay people when their products sell. Take a cut to fund people who are helping to run a storefront and keep the lights on.
• Alternatively, do big, self-funded projects and then make megabucks via kickstarter
• Let people contribute for a percentage ownership in something. If an artist designs a sculpture and an engineer turns it into a 3D model that will print well, and then a marketing guy makes a clever ad, each should get a percentage of the purchase price every time someone prints one. A bit also goes to supporting the building, and of course just paying for materials.

This idea is incredibly raw and unrefined. But it ties together some very profound possibilities in a way that I've been wanting to do for ages. Enabling creators by connecting people with diverse skillsets, giving them raw hardware to manufacture their goods, making it as easy as possible to bring products to market, and providing a platform to share costs equitably to both reward the process itself but also compensate people for their ideas... it could be amazing.

I need to give it some time to percolate. How you build this from nothing is one big question.

Frist Psot! Fighting robots, teaching STEM

10-24-2017

I've kept a journal for a long time, but I want to start writing in a bit of a different format - basically more of a project log and a more organized collection of my thoughts on different topics. The main goal here is to capture some of the mental energy that I have and save it for posterity, rather than just letting it vanish in the ether.

On that note, recently I have WAY too much mental energy. Like, my mind keeps thinking about building a battlebot, for no very good reason. Even though I've got lots of work to do and lots of more urgent things going on.

One possible cause is that we went to the maker faire two weeks ago, which was the first time I've actually witnessed a robot fight firsthand. It was badass.

Another contributor might be the fact that we had a long weekend vacation, with just our family. That kind of thing hasn't happened for over a year. So maybe it has given me a bit of an energy boost.

The third possible cause... I've been reading this: The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature

I've never really dived far into the relationship between the development of science and the birth of democracy, although as I'm reading this book the connection seems obvious. Not in the sense that there isn't some really deep material to wade through here, but in the sense that the historical milestones line up so well and the characters are so clearly interrelated that it feels like I should have thought about this before.

It also deals with a lot of the same folks from Neal Stephenson's incredible series: The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. A quick google shows that I really should have bought the cloth-bound collector's edition when it came out... it was $100 at the time, if I remember correctly, and now seems to be going for $800.

At any rate, it is inspiring as hell reading about the foundations of modern science, especially in the context of the massive social change it was so intimately related with. Every time I read about the great experimenters and early engineers in particular - Galileo, Boyle, Hooke, and now Spinoza - I'm struck with how inventive they were, and how amazing it must have been to be coming up with novel ideas, left and right, for the first time in history. Of course, they most likely had no idea of the incredible foundations they were laying (although, going by Bacon's quotes, maybe they understood EXACTLY what they were doing). It seems a bit unfair, in some ways, that now most novelty comes in the form of a tiny refinement of an exhaustively well developed concept, or in the application of very understood principles and technologies to previously ignored niches.

That said, thinkers of every generation have probably had similar thoughts. It's easy to look at Leonardo who seemingly sketched out primitive versions of most of our fundamental technologies, or any of the scientists who sketched out incredible new fields of study in a single paper in the early 1900's and wish for those same opportunities. However, I'm not sure that those same opportunities aren't sitting right in front of us today: the things that can be done now by a single nerd with a computer, a few months, and a bit of money represent years of work by a team of draftsmen, engineers, and human computers.

I think we're on the precipice of another golden age of invention and discovery, and at the very least, any one who is motivated to try it can replicate a few hundred years of scientific progress with the investment of a few hundred dollars in hobbiest-level equipment.

Personally, all my thoughts lately about robotics and science and history and politics have got me fired up in a way that I can't remember being since I was a teacher. I miss those times, and especially my favorite feeling: knowing that it was my JOB to build ridiculous science experiments.