[tt] rhizome platform design

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/06/rhizome-platform-design.html

Rhizome Platform Design

In the world of technology and sustainability, there is a certain “buzz”
surrounding the topics of personal manufacturing and platform design. Can we
get away from the hierarchal model of centralized manufacture and
distribution, and replace it with a world where design emerges from
open-source collaboration and is manufactured at the point of use by 3-D
printers and community manufacturing centers? Can a focus on meeting
community needs, rather than selling communities products that create
dependence, allow for improved localized self-sufficiency by way of platform
design and localized manufacture? Maybe. There are many projects and
theorists already working on these notions—the intent of this article is to
suggest that these efforts operate within the framework of rhizome theory,
and more importantly, that these efforts recognize their inherent weaknesses
that rhizome theory was developed to overcome.

One example of this trend toward community manufacturing and platform design
is the LifeTrac open source tractor project. There, an online collaborative
called OpenFarmTech is trying to leverage engineers, users, and innovators
around the world to develop a design for an inexpensive, low-maintenance
tractor that can be manufactured, used, and repaired by third-world
communities. I think this is a fascinating project, and one that John Robb
has highlighted as an example of the potential for community fabrication.
However, it’s also an example of the potential pitfalls of thinking that
platform design or personal/community manufacturing per se will advance local
resilience and self-sufficiency. The LifeTrac tractor, for example, still
relies on an internal combustion engine, metal-based hydraulics, and rubber
tires, just to name a few components that most certainly won’t be
manufactured at the community level, or derived from raw materials available
at the community level. While the LifeTrac project may free rural communities
from dependence on specific, for-profit tractor manufacturers, it will not
free them from dependency (and the associated side effects) on distant
manufactures of engines, smelters of metals, or producers of tires. While
this may be an improvement, it’s a Pyrrhic victory at best, as it will only
transfer to locus of their dependency-derived problems, and will not actually
bolster their resiliency to external shock or their ability to extract
themselves from the growth-related problems that come from lack of localized
self-sufficiency.

LifeTrac embodies the problems inherent in the promise of 3-D printers,
extreme-personalization, and other examples of technology-first platform
design. But these problems are not inherent in the notion of platform design
itself. It is possible to properly yoke the technology of platform design to
the needs and objectives of creating a resilient, minimally self-sufficient
community. As an example of such a rhizome approach to platform design, let’s
consider mud bricks…

Like the LifeTrac’s focus on meeting community agricultural needs, mud brick
technology could play a critical role in community development in many
environments—leverage a global knowledge base to create buildings with low
heating and cooling energy requirements, safe from earthquakes, resistant to
erosion, capable of impressive structural feats, etc. Unlike LifeTrac,
however, an open-source platform for use of mud brick technology need not
create or continue dependencies on external sources of raw materials,
external manufacturing, etc. In fact, it has the potential to significantly
reduce the dependence of most developing rural communities on imported
cement, and it has the potential to provide the benefits of cement (and
beyond) to those minimally-developing communities that can’t afford or source
cement at present. This may become in increasingly important issue in the
near future as global cement production (and the energy it consumes)
skyrockets. Sure, an open source platform to develop mud brick technology
isn’t very sexy (unlike a tractor!), but goals like producing high R-value
adobe with excellent structural properties could produce amazing results.

When considering the architectural and infrastructure issues that advanced
mud brick could address, many scientists, engineers, and corporations will
completely ignore the potential for using vernacular materials, instead
seeing a general materials engineering problem, or an infrastructure design
problem. They’ll say something like:

“Well, concrete can be effectively adapted to meet the shelter needs of
people in community X. We can create an inexpensive insulated concrete form
that combines the high-mass concrete with a polyurethane foam insulation to
provide both high R-value, high thermal mass, and excellent structural
strength.”

That works fine if the goal is to enhance dependency on non-local
manufacturing, or non-local extraction of raw materials, etc. However, if the
goal is to increase localized resiliency and self-sufficiency, then projects
must always be pursued with that in mind. In the same example, these
engineers might instead say:

“Well, concrete is out as most communities don’t have access to the raw
materials, or to the energy necessary to process it. Sure, we’ll still use
concrete for some applications, but where possible we will use some kind of
locally-produced product. Most communities have ready access to the
requirements for mud-bricks, so let’s instead find a way to use those
materials to achieve the same end as an insulated concrete form.”

And then those same engineers could embark on an open-source development
program that will produce flexible technologies that can be adapted by
individual communities to meet their needs with locally available tools,
materials, and production. How exactly will they do this? I have no
idea—that’s exactly the point: when the goal of the design process is to
support, not defeat, local resiliency and self-sufficiency, then that is
exactly what the design process will produce. That’s the potential for
combining rhizome with platform design and personal manufacturing...  One
example of rhizome platform design already in action is the Cinva Ram (hat
tip to BrianT). The Cinva Ram is a low-tech, low cost, but highly effective
manual press for creating mud bricks out of a variety of locally-sourced
materials. A team of four people can make as many as 500 bricks a day with
this device, and it can be easily assembled at the community level using
open-source plans. Other examples, just in the building materials arena,
include advances in rammed earth construction, experiments in papercrete
construction, etc.

How far can this go? Many people immediately point to modern medicine (e.g.
an MRI machine) or to the internet (microprocessors) as examples of things
that simply can’t be solved I this manner. They may be right. If your goal is
to produce an MRI machine using only locally sourced raw materials and local
manufacture, I’m pretty sure you’ll fail. However, if the goal is to produce
a system of medicine that effectively serves a local community, I think there
is a great deal of potential to address the problem in a truly local fashion
if we can just get our goals in the right order. MRI machines are developed
to make money, and they do that to the extent that they can improve health
within a for-profit system. That works decently well for most people in an
environment of surplus energy and amidst a solid political and economic
foundation like currently exists in America or Europe. It’s a bankrupt
business model in today’s third world, and quite possibly in tomorrow’s first
world. While a resilient, self-sufficient community may never be able to
produce its own MRI machine, I see no reason why it can’t produce an
effective health-care system if it keeps that, along with local
self-sufficiency, as the primary goals, and leverages a global (or even
merely local) knowledge base to that end.