Two items here.

1) A call by Marcin that is important enough to reproduce

2) remarkable work by Japanese researchers for a P2P infrastructure for local sustainable production

1: Marcin Jakubowski:

“How many times have you heard the like of, “When solar cell companies develop cheaper panels, then we’ll switch to solar power.” Instead of waiting around for good products to become affordable, why don’t we collaborate and make them reality, today? Face it. Optimization has not happened for many products, in the context of the centralized industrial system. It is not in its interest to distribute wealth, as is evidenced simply by the increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

We all have some kind of skill. What if networkers, designers, fundraisers, engineers from all walks of life, and others collaborated to produce optimal, user-friendly, durable, and inexpensive products, ones which truly meet needs at the absolute lowest expense to the user?

Our business model focuses on making such development a practical reality. The process is simple: it merely involves selecting products of key importance, and optimizing them, one after another. We are not talking of doing one product and quitting. We are talking of optimizing the entire economy. This takes a dedicated effort.

If production is optimized, then it is not difficult to imagine certain improvements in society: such as renewable energy for everybody, or clean air and water for all.

What is this magical process? The key to the business model is optimization via voluntary product development, followed by collaborative funding of production facilities. We were told that it is impossible to gather the huge resources necessary for product development from volunteers. We found that there are people out there who care. We were told that drastic cost reduction is impossible – but we are proving that wrong with our CEB machine.

We are well on the way with this development method with the CEB, and are looking forward to first production runs in October. Not only this, we will be offering apprenticeships for anyone who is interested in replicating the enterprise. That’s part of our dissemination strategy: open enterprise models and open licensing.

We need your help to extend this development process to other products. Our next major project is to make solar electricity available to everyone. Please examine all the proposed projects more closely, and let us know if you’d like to help spawn development in an area that interests you.”

2: Peer-to-Peer Architecture for a Dependable and Sustainable Social Infrastructure:

Article: Local Production, Local Consumption Peer-to-Peer Architecture for a Dependable and Sustainable Social Infrastructure. By Saito, K.; Morino, E.; Suko, Y.; Suzuki, T.; Murai, J.;Applications and the Internet Workshops, 2007. SAINT Workshops 2007. International Symposium on Jan. 2007 Page(s):58 – 58

Abstract: “Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a system of overlay networks such that participants can potentially take symmetrical roles. This translates itself into a design based on the philosophy of local production, local consumption (LPLC), originally an agricultural concept to promote sustainable local economy. This philosophy helps enhancing survivability of a society by providing a dependable economic infrastructure and promoting the power of individuals. This paper attempts to put existing works of P2P designs into the perspective of the five-layer architecture model to realize LPLC, and proposes future research directions toward integration of P2P studies for actualization of a dependable and sustainable social infrastructure.”