Steam Punks

This article discusses how some amateur engineers are working to design and build a set of tools that would enable self-reliant people to make everything they need. Marcin Jakubowski and his colleagues are among such people who are working for the past many years on the concept of open-source economy. The rationale for this concept is steeped in the language of empowerment. Using an open-source Web platform known as a wiki, Jakubowski worked with a far-flung network of collaborators over the Internet to identify the minimum number of technologies needed to produce a reasonable facsimile of modern life. Some of the items on the resulting list are the greatest hits of industrialism over the past 200 years: the steam engine, the combine, and the induction furnace. So far, the team has completed seven prototype machines: the tractor, a tiller, a hydraulic power unit, a computer numerically controlled plasma torch table, a drill press, a hole punch, and a compressed earth block press.