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Will or Can "Open Hardware" replace Capitalism, or at least be the leading drive for people to continue living instead of making just money?
Cesar Harada did an amazing job on his presentation of his new invention!
It was jamm packed with so many different ideas that melded into a hot pot of
innovation!
Open Hardware was one of my favorite aspects of his presentation.
Will Open Hardware catch on, or will large company/mob mentality deem it unprofitable?
Can we as a collective group change this outdated mentality that people need to be tricked into giving their money out, and let the product actually sell itself?
Topics:
Great Innovation Mentality Paradigm Shift
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Toni Vermeer
I think it could work at least in some area's, and in many ways it already does. What Cesar Herada does is just one example. He uses "crowd sourcing" to fund his projects.
I think any project curated by governments should be Open Source. They are funded by taxpayers money and shoudl benefit to all. If new thechniques, let;s say for example for building bridges cheaper and stronger, will be open hardware, students and companies all over the world can experiment with it and develop it further.
Note that 'Open Hardware' isn't the same as 'for free', nor that you can't make a profit with it.
pat gilbert 100+
My thinking is that one of the fundamental dynamics of the economy is private property, this premise violates that dynamic. The only other example I can think of that is similar to this premise is Linux although it still exists it does not appear have a major share of the market. If I'm ignorant enlighten me.
I will give you that these guys have purpose and are innovative these qualities I very much admire.
But the reality of the market place is that to move into main street you need investors, his perfunctory graph showing "industry" is missing this vital step. Although the development may speed up through collaboration at some point the investment step has to occur at which point there are going to winners and losers.
Toni Vermeer
I am not an expert on this, and I know that Linux seems to have a really small marketshare, but you might be using a few machines in your home already with Linux under the hood. Also a country like Venezuela has everything in government and education running on Linux and other open source programs, by law. A huge company like Unilever runs on Linux. The One Laptop Per Child program, providing cheap laptops to children in developing countries, can do so because they are based on free but high quality, open source software.
Google Chrome is mostly open source and even Microsoft creates open source software these days. And what about programs like Firefox and OpenOffice?
Many big hollywood movies are produced with open source / linux software. In the creative industries this is important, because with the help of the community, the tools they need are getting developped better and faster. So it is actually cheaper for them to make them open source.
Like Scott says, the opposit, too many patents, can cause a problem.
The documentary 'Who killed the electric car" claims that the oil industry has bought a lot of patents on innovative inventions, which could help reduce the demand for oil. The industry claims they want to use these inventions, but instead they keep them somewhere on the bottom of a drawer, on purpose. So that's why open source can actually help progress.
Why wouldn't a big oil company like, say, BP not be interested in funding the project in the video? It could save them a lot of money and trouble the future. And the license-model wil assure that it will always stay open source.
pat gilbert 100+
Toni Vermeer
But you are right it seems very hard 'moving into main street' without cash. The reason most open source projects don't have a huge marketshare is not because of their potential or quality, but lack of cash. But that doesn't mean they can't be important.
pat gilbert 100+
While I'm at it this same idea goes for equality and mans desire to conquer the universe as these things are also organic to man's DNA
Barry Palmer 50+
Toni Vermeer
pat gilbert 100+
scott lee
The reason linux works so well (I use it and it works more reliable than any other OS I have used) is because it follows the same process as the scientific method. They publish open documents that are peer reviewed by the community.
The same process can and has worked for hardware. You just have to look at the history of science. There are many developments in the scientific community that follow this model and the technology created is superb.
Just because there is no patent on these Protei robots for cleaning pollution, doesn't mean there is no room for profit. They must be deployed, transported, maintained, and stored when not in use. A company can contract out the manufacture of them and profit from their deployment.
pat gilbert 100+
Fair enough and I suspect that the scientific method is a huge part of the sucess.
The speaker appeared to infer that there would not be or is a profit motive, that is what I disagree with. And definitely with Derek's idea of replacing the nasty capitalism with some delusion from the academics.