Without the state

Making hardware 'open source' can help us fight future pandemics - here's how we get there

Making hardware 'open source' can help us fight future pandemics - here's how we get there

elenabsl/Shutterstock

Richard Bowman, University of Bath and Julian Stirling, University of Bath

In factories and industrial estates across the world, exceptional efforts are being made to ensure hospitals have ventilators, and logistics firms have freezers and refrigerators. Behind the scenes, this manufacturing drive has been taking place on an epic, unprecedented scale. In some places, it’s also been horrendously inefficient.

Some of that inefficiency is only to be expected. Manufacturing responsively at such short notice was always going to be messy. But many of the hardware hold-ups we’ve witnessed – from production line bottlenecks to parts shortages – could be avoided in the future by applying an “open source” ethos to the world’s production of hardware.

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Read more: Five ways collective intelligence can help beat coronavirus in developing countries

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Open source design is a form of collective intelligence, where experts work together to create a design that anyone has the legal right to manufacture. The software industry has long shown that “open” collaboration is not only possible, but advantageous. Open source software is ubiquitous, and the servers that power the internet itself are largely run on open technology, collaboratively designed by competing companies.

Early in the pandemic, and in recognition of the global emergency that was unfolding, dozens of the world’s largest companies did actually sign up to the “Open COVID Pledge”, promising to share their intellectual property to help fight the virus. On a smaller scale, more than 100 project teams set out to create and share “open” ventilator designs that could be produced locally, helping address the pressing need for ventilators around the world.

Unfortunately, neither of these initiatives succeeded in producing ventilators at the rate required by stretched hospitals in the early weeks of the pandemic. After examining existing attempts to share the intellectual property of machines, our recent paper concludes that projects must be open from the start in order to make a success of open hardware. Everything from the first doodle on a napkin to the detailed calculations that verify safety must be available if other experts and manufacturers are going to participate in the design.

Medical ventilators have been in particular demand since the beginning of the pandemic. Dan Race/Shutterstock

The road to open hardware

Producing hardware through open collaboration may be daunting. As opposed to the entirely virtual collaboration required for software development, hardware development needs physical parts – raw materials and machinery. It needs testing facilities and engineers to perform stress tests and safety checks.

There are promising signs that these challenges can be met. The RepRap 3D printer project has brought low cost 3D printing to a wider audience, making affordable prototyping possible at a distance. Meanwhile, the CERN White Rabbit project has shown that even the complex electronics that control the Large Hadron Collider can be developed as as open source hardware. But, to be efficient we need better work flows for collaboration – systems to help organise the distribution of tasks and responsibilities on collaborative hardware projects.

The journey from prototype to production is much more difficult, and less exciting, than the technical challenge of prototyping a device. Manufacturers must comply with international standards to ensure quality and manage risk related to their products. This is especially true of medical hardware, upon which lives depend. A key challenge for open hardware will be to achieve this certification in the same way that private companies do today.

Under current regulations, no matter how impressive and safe, ventilators constructed in volunteer maker spaces cannot be certified for medical use. But for equipment which is less strictly regulated, like face shields, open hardware is currently being leveraged successfully.

Achieving similar successes with high-tech medical devices will require organisations that are built to manufacture from open designs – dynamic factories, for instance, which will be responsive to global emergencies. It takes time to establish these organisations. But we can’t afford to wait for the next emergency: we should begin creating them today, in preparation for the next pandemic.

Of course, finding sustainable business models for open hardware is a challenge: can a system be created which shares intellectual property for free while helping designers and manufacturers profit? In one sense, open hardware has an advantage here: people are used to buying products, where online consumers are accustomed to using software for free.

Nonetheless, it’s likely that setting up an open hardware manufacturing ecosystem will need public funding, or investor funding buying into non-traditional business models. This would follow the trajectory of the internet, which began life funded by public institutions and is now home to the world’s biggest private enterprises.

Closer inspection

The open source microscope. Author provided

We’ve experimented with our own open hardware project to help us understand how the future of collaborative hardware might look. Our OpenFlexure microscope is designed to be manufactured at low cost in sub-Saharan Africa, to be used for malaria diagnoses. We’ve probably spent more time designing the processes that help us share our knowledge effectively than designing the microscope itself.

In the short term, this slows our progress. In the long term, we expect that manufacturers anywhere in the world will be able to understand our design and adapt it to their local context. As these processes become further standardised, sharing designs for production will become increasingly simple. The final and most ambitious phase of our project will be working with manufacturers to produce microscopes certified for medical use – a huge step towards open source medical hardware we’d need to better fight a future pandemic.

Humanity already knew how to make ventilators decades before this pandemic hit. What was lacking was the access to this knowledge, the skills to work together on adapting a design, and the logistics to rapidly scale the manufacturing of complex machinery. It will take years to address these issues. Starting that process today will help us tackle global emergencies more dynamically and efficiently in the future.

Richard Bowman, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Proleptic Reader, Department of Physics, University of Bath and Julian Stirling, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Core Housing UK style

In an earlier post, I proposed an adaptation of the core-housing approach adopted in developing countries, with serviced plots on which would be constructed a basic unit of one living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The plots would be big enough to allow extensions and additions to this core provision as the owners needs grew and changed, without the need to move and incur estate agents and legal fees. The original planning permission for the site would allow for the construction of a dwelling over no more than a fixed proportion of the plot area, without requiring anything other than Building Regulation approval. This would probably done by creating a Local Special Development Order setting out some basic parameters, such as maximum plot coverage and storey limits plus perhaps some rules about development at the boundaries.

In this post I’m going to look at how this could work through the stories of six different households.

Alfred and Grace Hitchcock

…are newly married. They are currently living in a small flat with no outdoor space, a tiny shower room and minimal cooking facilities. They have very little savings. Both are currently working, Alfred is a mechanic while Grace is an administrator in a local doctor’s practice. They fully intend to have children, but don’t want to do so while in their present flat.

James and Gloria Stewart

…have been married for about 7 years, Their son, Harvey is about to start school and Gloria is looking to get back to work part time. They do not intend to have any more children. James works in IT management. Before Harvey was born, Gloria had been working in a local architectural practice as a CAD technician and graphic designer. They currently live in a 2 bed flat, rented from one of the partners in the architectural firm where Gloria worked. He is looking to sell and they need to move within the next 12 months.

George and Stephanie Lucas

…are on the point of retiring. They have a large house and garden, with no mortgage, but Stephanie is in poor health with a progressive illness and they recognise the need to move to a smaller house that can be adapted to meet their needs. Before she fell ill both of them enjoyed their garden and want to retain some outdoor space that can be easily maintained. George is an engineer, while Stephanie taught French and Spanish at the local secondary school. They have two grown up children, both married, each with one child

David Lean

…is divorced, in his early 40s. He has no children. He is a plumber and general builder. He currently rents a flat and a separate lock up in which he keeps his tools and materials. He also plays in a band in the evenings and weekends and enjoys a full social life.

John and Mary Ford

…are in their 40s with two children, girls aged 12 and 14. They currently live in a standard 3 bed semi built about 15 years ago. As their children get older, they would like to provide them with space to do school work and to socialise with friends in ways that don’t disrupt the house for their parents. John is a butcher with his own shop, while Mary works part time as a teaching assistant. She would however very much like to get back to making pottery, having studied ceramics at university and worked for a while as a studio assistant to a well known artist.

Alice and Carol

…are two students at the local university.

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For the purposes of this post, I’m assuming each plot has a road frontage and provided with all mains water, electricity and if available gas, plus phone line and broadband connection. Basic provision on the site will be the core unit of a single room plus a kitchen and a bathroom. Foundations will be adequate to take a two story building in traditional construction. All purchasers will be provided with a pack showing full details of all services plus technical details of foundations and a site survey at sufficient detail for setting out any further building work. Constructional details for a range of extensions will be available for purchase from the developers. First occupants will also have the option of a 'turnkey' deal for the construction of any extensions.

The plots vary in size but all are large enough for a two story family house.

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With very limited money Alfred and Grace decide to live in just the basic unit but they buy the constructional details to add a bedroom when they are ready. The basic unit is about the same size as their present flat, but they will have the full plot available on which they intend to grow their own fruit and vegetables while they save.

Next door, James and Gloria need to build additional space from the start. They extend sideways and build a new storey above both the basic unit and the extension. On the first floor they create two bedrooms and a bathroom. Downstairs they extend the kitchen into the former bathroom and open it up to the room adjacent. The extension becomes their new living room.

George and Stephanie decide to keep their new house on one floor. They extend in both directions to create two new wings at right angles to the core. In one wing they create a large bedroom and a fully accessible wet room, with space and storage for equipment such as hoists to cater for Stephanie’s needs as her illness progresses. The new bedroom opens directly onto a small garden space with level access for a wheelchair. In the other wing they create two rooms. One is a guest bedroom with a shower. This will also be available for live in carers to use if need be. The other is a small office/studio space that Stephanie can use to take private students for language classes either individually or in small groups. It has its own door accessible from the street so that students can come and go without disrupting the rest of the house.

David Lean decides not to extend for the moment but to build a two storey detached building with the aim of storing his tools and materials on site. He builds this on the boundary with a garage and store on the ground floor and an office and music room above, incorporating high levels of acoustic insulation across the whole building. Before buying he has checked that the planning permission for the development allows for the possibility of running businesses such as his.

John and Mary extend in a similar fashion to George and Stephanie, in both directions, although they also build upwards. On one side of the core unit they build a wing with two bedrooms accessed off a third room across the front of both. This provides a shared living space for their two daughters and incorporates a bathroom and toilet. They allow for an independent entrance into this area, but do not construct it yet. On the other side they build a two storey extension. On the ground floor they create a ‘parent space’ with a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. The core unit becomes a large kitchen-dining area.

After about a year;

Alfred and Grace decide to construct the additional bedroom, using the pre-purchased plans, which will effectively double their living space. As the work is about to start, they discover that Grace is pregnant, so requiring a hasty revision. They subdivide the new bedroom to the rear by creating a small room to use as a nursery. They make sure water and drainage services are available to this extension since they are not sure what its long term use will be.

After a couple of years;

Alfred and Grace decide to have another child. They have both had promotions and are financially more secure. Alfred is now workshop manager and Grace has become Practice Manager. Their daughter is also growing and needs more space. They decide to build a new wing on the other side of their living area with two bedrooms and a bathroom. The small room used by their daughter will become an en-suite bathroom and the core unit will become a single kitchen-dining area.

James has become disenchanted with working for a large company and wants to set up on his own account. He decides to set up as an IT trainer. He only needs an office at home since most of his work will be on the clients premises. He builds a simple freestanding garden office. Gloria will work with him as a trainer from time to time, but she is looking to develop her own career.

David decides he needs a larger living space. He is now engaged and with his new partner gets finance to build a new two storey extension. The ground floor will become a new kitchen dining area, with a bedroom and bathroom above. The old kitchen and bathroom will be stripped out and large new glass doors put in to give access to the garden, so that the whole of the original core unit becomes a living space.

After another few years;

the Ford’s children have now left home. They could downsize, but Mary’s mother is becoming frail and needs support. She moves into the space that had been used by the two girls and they insert a tiny kitchen for her, as well as opening up a separate front door.

Gloria Stewart and Mary Ford have decided to go into business together as a design consultancy. David has given up his business and now works for a local builder's merchants. He rents out his old office and store to Gloria and Mary, putting in an outside staircase to give him a separate access to his music room.

Stephanie has died and George is finding the house too large for him. He decides not to move however but instead subdivides his house, selling the space that had been used by the carer in Stephanie's last years to David and his new wife living on the adjacent plot, to incorporate into their own house to give space for his expanding family. He retains his old kitchen dining area and bedroom/ bathroom, in the knowledge that as he grows older it will continue to be usable.

After the death of Mary Ford's mother they let the small flat as a separate unit to Alice and Carol, a couple of students at the local university. Alice works part time for Gloria and Mary, while Carol provides care and domestic support for George and some other elderly residents in the area.

After a few more years;

George has now died while David and his wife have moved away. George’s children buy back the portion sold off to David and reinstate the original house which they then sell to Carol and Alice who are after graduation have now married. Alice is now a journalist and freelance writer while Carol is working as a physiotherapist, working from the space Stephanie had used for language classes.

David’s old house is sold to Penny and Albert Marshall. They are a middle aged couple whose children have left home. They have no need for the music room so sell the whole building to Gloria and Mary whose design consultancy is growing and needs more space.

***

I could continue in this vein, but my aim is not to tell family stories but to illustrate how designing for flexibility in use and the creation of a liberal enabling framework for small scale developments can generate both social and economic benefits. I’m not suggesting it is a model for everyone. Some people would rather move than build while others will need to relocate with new jobs. Nor is this about self build, although there is no reason why it could not be done that way. It might even be easier, with the site and core accommodation secure.

If however we are to tackle the real crisis in housing in the UK and the exclusion of young people from secure access to housing, then we need a radical rethink. All too often a so-called starter homes is simply very small. The approach described here allows that initial tiny property to grow and adjust to changing family circumstances without the disruption and loss of community caused by having to move elsewhere.

The idea of core housing and adapting the concept for the UK

Back in the late 1960s, while still a student,  I came across a book by Charles Abrams, a UN advisor on housing matters. In that book, Man's Struggle for Shelter in An Urbanizing World, Abrams describes how people living in the shanty towns of Latin America or Africa create housing for themselves. These areas are known by a variety of names – 'barrio or 'favela' in Latin America for example.

The first step was to acquire a piece of land, not necessarily legally. On that land a very simple single room dwelling would be erected, using whatever material could be acquired. As money becomes available the dwelling is extended and upgraded. Plastic and cardboard is replaced by concrete blocks. More floor space is added. A first floor is constructed. Gradually the building consolidates itself on the plot.

Because so often the occupation of the site was illegal, this dwelling would however have no water supply, no sanitation or power. Conditions in the neighbourhood would be squalid and unhealthy. Because the site has been grabbed from whatever is available access for vehicles may well be impossible. There is little incentive to improve the house in these circumstances.

The typical state response to this is clearance. There are many disadvantages to this of course. The redevelopment schemes are expensive and can only house a fraction of the people living in these illegal settlements. As those who are rehoused are moved out, their places are taken by new immigrants and the problem persists. Frequently those moved out are unhappy too. They may be miles away from their place of work and either lose their job or are forced to make long and complicated journeys. In both cases they are usually worse off financially. It isn't unknown for the displaced residents to move back to their old neighbourhood. (Although not something I'm going to pursue here, these were of course similar to the problems experienced by residents in the so-called slum clearance areas here in the UK in the '50s and '60s.)

Abrams proposed an alternative that he believed would be cheaper and better meet the needs of the impoverished families involved. He wanted to harness the energy and commitment of the residents of the 'favela', already demonstrated in their willingness to move from impoverished rural locations to live in squalor in exchange for the chance to improve their lot.

He suggested a formalisation of the process already going on, by setting out a grid of serviced roads and plots, each with water, sanitation and power connections available. On these plots could be erected a simple one room dwelling as before. This could be done by the occupier or by the state. He called this ‘core housing’. Although the space available would be as restricted as before, because minimal infrastructure was in place, the living conditions would be significantly improved.

As before, as money became available, residents would be able to enlarge and extend the house to meet their specific needs. Rather than being displaced to an inflexible high rise block where they lost all control over their surroundings, they would remain in control of their lives. They could grow food to support themselves or for sale or exchange with neighbours. They would have a secure tenure and could pass the property on to younger generations.

This isn't a new process of course. It is what happened with the homesteaders of 19^th Century America, it happened in the whaling settlements of Nantucket and it happens traditionally in Malaya. (Images from ‘How Buildings Learn ’ by Stuart Brand)

 

Closer to home it is what happened in planned mediaeval settlements here in the UK and in English controlled France. There is a good list in the book 'New Towns of the Middle Ages' by Maurice Beresford, originally published in 1967. That list places as varied as Devizes, Hungerford, Thirsk, Uxbridge, Boroughbridge, Wokingham and Truro. Another example is the Chequers area of Salisbury. Chequer has the same root as 'quarter', in the sense of an area of a town. It also gives us the word chequerboard for reasons that should be clear from the image below (taken from Beresford above).  In these planned towns or plantations, roads would have been set out and plots sold or let subject to covenants covering the broad form of the development to be built. Typically there might be a requirement to build in brick or stone, limit the height to no more than 3-4 stories, to build across the entire frontage and limiting the uses that could be carried out on the plot. Out of these simple rules came the endless variety of the English Market Town.

In the next post I’m going to look at how these ideas might be adapted in the UK.

Park yourself...

CoolTown Studios.

For those of you who have casually wondered what an auto-oriented street would be like if it were reclaimed by people, for people, Park(ing) Day is an annual step in that direction. Participants in cities around the U.S. and the world ‘park’ themselves in a parking space for the day, paying the meter of course, and make a third place of it.

A nice example of direct action.

More videos here

World's fastest Broadband

Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.
...
The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.

According to Karlstad Stadsnät [the local council's network arm,] the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.
...
"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," said Jonsson. [Head of Karlstad Stadsnät]

via Fred First
 

Towards a living art - a digital manifesto

Digital tools can make Art that is accessible; Art that everyday people can afford to take home and live with, and discard when they want to move on to something new. "Archivability" is a scam...a way to exclude...a lame excuse to charge more money. We can't possibly know that any one of us is making artwork that someone will want to pull out of an hermetically sealed drawer in five hundred years. Digital artwork is much more akin to the Japanese print makers of the 1700 and 1800s. No one questioned if those prints were going to last three hundred years. Those colorful, masterful, fast moving commodities served a different purpose all together...a living purpose. A purpose that was inextricably bound to expanded creative and commercial bandwidth brought about by new tools and techniques. The market for those prints roared with the life of mass approval not exclusion based on price or snobbish philosophy. This is where a Manifesto of Digital Art should carry us.

I liked this bit too:

Like all good manifestos our's must call for the death of something or other. Usually, this death is wished upon an oppressor or an oppressive idea. I can think of no greater oppression than the concept of "limited editions". One of the things nailed into your head while attending the finer art schools is that the artist owes it to buyers, agents and your future estate to limit your output of a certain image. The argument usually is that too many copies drives down the prices and scares off your "investors". But, who really profits from this? Not the artist. This is the art agents' way of guaranteeing that after you die everyone else will profit.

and this:

If I were to guess as to how future art critics might describe this period in the development of digital media and the effect it will have on the world of Fine Art, I might venture to say; "The turn of the new century was a heady and revolutionary period in the development of Art that saw, through the introduction of digital tools, a great democratization in art making and began a period of time wherein the cracks in the dam of the traditional Fine Arts world began to show."

Pass the dynamite.

This is a bus?

This is indeed a bus. (Via Cool Town Studios)

Wikis, webs and what people REALLY think

In a recent post I quoted this:

Rather than expect people to visit somebody else’s online space to share their views or debate issues, more and more people will share their own views through a personal space, weblog or wiki with the expectation that these can be cross-posted or syndicated to other places that would like to share them. People should own their own contributions and express them in their own voice - it should be up to the consulting organisation to do the leg-work to aggregate these contributions by going to the people, rather than vice versa.

I've been playing with wikis for a while, using PBwiki, and I used to visit Ecotone when it was active, but I have never used it for any serious purpose. Now in a naked attempt at promotion, which I freely acknowledge, those nice people at PBwiki have offered to double my wikispace it I post about them here. You can tour their site or sign on and play as I did.

There is a serious point to this of course. The availability of extra space gives me a chance to think about slightly more complex possibilities. I also believe that the greater the variety of tools available, whether blogs and wikis or photologs (like flickr), the more likely it is that they will permeate into the wider community and give the standard member of the public the chance to have their say in their own words.

I'm working on something at the moment which could bring some of these ideas together in a public consultation. If it is going to work I have to be able to do it myself because I am in no way a programmer - I stopped doing that when I sold my BBC Micro. Anything that depends on complex tools simply won't work. I'm hoping to adapt an idea from Village Design Statements that I know has been used elsewhere in other ways (here and here for example).

I'm looking for funding for a bundle of disposable cameras (or better still some digital compacts) to give out to 'ordinary people' so that they can then take pictures of what matters to them. The current context for me is our local town centre, but it could be health, being young in this town or anything . The idea is to upload the pictures plus writings by local people to a wiki or perhaps to a photolog and enable a debate around those images and writings. A wiki would be better in many because it can take all forms of comment in formats not predetermined by others, but the downside is that with no structure it can be hard to find your way around. It is important that this doesn't take place in isolation - it has to be tied in with other things to give everyone as many ways in tot he discussion as possible. We could also for example set up an online forum, hold 'cafe conversations', exhibitions of the photographs, invite letters in the local paper, do guided walks, have a market stall. We could look at the history of the place - and therefore at why it looks and operates as it does today. The Urban Tapestries project might be another option

I'm quite excited by the possibilities, but also slightly daunted. Most public consultation activity does one thing - it almost certaintly isn't enough and it may indeed be the wrong thing, but by and large it is easier, especially for time pressed and/or cash strapped local authorities or voluntary groups. The approach I'm thinking about is multi-stemmed and much more complex. I haven't even begun to think about how we might collate what comes in...

Instructables

In a - sort of - way this follows on from the previous post. Looks like it will be a fascinating site to monitor. I discovered it via flickr, where it was described as a 'Flickr for DIY', which seems apposite, although I think it has the potential to be much more.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing is a wonderful idea, allowing an artist to set the terms on which their work can be used. The image below is one of mine from Flickr but based on another photograph, (licensed under these terms) so allowing me to create derivative works and in this case even to make commercial use.

Mysterious beauty, originally uploaded by ibanda.

Having access in this way is really stimulating, letting me work with a host of images I would never have taken myself and allowing me both to practice digiatal manipulation and in some cases to produce works that stand on their own.

This one for example is I think different enough from its source to have a standing of its own. I'm looking at how I might post some of my own images under a Creative Commons license. It seems reasonable that if I make use of these I should also offer some up.