Autonomy Now - or is The Do it Yourself open source revolution a road to sovereignty?

On Christmas Eve, while Theresa Spence went hungry, I lay awake worrying and wondering.

I eventually reached a sort of self justificatory epiphany. First Nations could achieve de facto sovereignty through the revolution in manufacturing technology. (As if anything is easy, but whatever)

(See Wired articles on DIY

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_adafruit/


Foreign Affairs article "how to make just about anything"

(http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138154/neil-gershenfeld/how-to-make-almost-anything)

The idea was to help setup or at least share some links, so every community could open a Fab Lab - fabrication laboratory - that includes computer controlled milling machines (think your own ikea), 3d printers, cnc machines - computer numerical control
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_control) and a couple others...

The open source “revolution” means that more and more designs for more and more useful objects are freely available and groups like Open Source Ecology
(http://opensourceecology.org/) have set themselves the mission of designing, building, and then sharing the blueprints for the 50 machines necessary for a modern industrial civilization. Their goal is to entirely revolutionize the current economic model by freely distributing the knowledge necessary for anyone to create an autonomous industrial community.

Another incredible organization is the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group
(http://www.aidg.org/) who works in places like Haiti and Guatemala as a business incubator in “the arenas of energy, water and sanitation”

One of the grand daddies of what I see as cause for hope for the future is the Rocky Mountain Research institute (http://www.rmi.org/) where Amory Lovins has been leading practical research into solutions to many of the problems facing industrial society for decades. Their latest book “Reinventing Fire” (http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire) lays out the business case for heading to a low carbon future and the estimated $5 TRILLION savings it could unleash.

So there. Links ... Today's substitute for action...but I needed to get them out there. Read a great self-helpy list the other day “12 things successful people do differently” (http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/01/22/12-things-successful-people-do-differently/) that said “acquiring knowledge isn't growth - acting on it is” - which I've felt is a weak spot for me.

So, until I can actually say I've acted on these ideas, there's the link sharing.