FSCONS: Smári McCarthy on abundance




Smári McCarthy Originally uploaded by Wrote

The man in the picture is Icelandic, outlandish, with lots of fancy words.

FabLabs (a set of machines to make any plastic object up to 1 meter in size) point to a future, and McCarthy talked about that future. No scarcity, everything “non-exotic” (which is not imbued with aura, like say, the Eiffel tower) is… available.

The intersection of hackers and anarchists: substantial, but not complete.

Freeganism got a mention in the talk. And “turkey sandwich”.

He got a government grant to run his FabLab. He said he’d looked around him, seeing only fishing industry. Digital fabrication might be a future for a place like that. A clean break with tradition.

Open Farm Tech was mentioned. OS tractors. Smari is credited with the prototype code for CNC (you know, extruders and such) on the website. The tractor is called LifeTrac. Design-for-disassembly. I’m very taken with this project. Update: See comments for direct links to videos and such.


Published by olleolleolle

Olle is a programmer, enjoying sunny Malmö in Sweden.

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2 Comments

  1. The specific link for the tractor in action:

    http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=364

    and other videos:

    http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Factor_e_Live

    Here is some explicit fodder regarding abundance – community supported manufacturing for our open source Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press –

    http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Factor_e_Live

    Support our work at:

    http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Ecology:Site_support

    Marcin and the Factor e Team

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