2020-05-23
A project to redesign core industrial tools, refactoring to account for post-industrial decentralizability.
You can find source code, designs, etc. for a bunch of stuff in this project here:
https://github.com/queeriouslabs/ReFactor.
ReFactor aims to answer the questions:
How can we decentralize production of essentials – clothing, food, water, etc. – taking into account the different conditions in the 21st century?
How can our tools be made more locally scaled, more user-friendly, and more automated?
How can we enable greater autonomy with as minimal a tradeoff in quality of life and as minimal a labor burden?
How can we remove dependence on centralized skill, labor, and capital?
Much of the work will be built on pre-existing designs and if lucky, will only require slight modifications. Some may involve long periods of experimentation. But we aim to build, test, and document everything. But one of the main constraints is that the tools must be buildable and repairable at small community workshops like hackerspaces and makerspaces, by people who can learn the necessary skills at those workshops.
Our goals with this project are utopian in nature. We want to provide the design foundations for a new kind of society oriented around maximally localized production of necessities, run by the people who depend on the tools doing the production. A society aimed at freeing people from laboring, whether directly or indirectly, for their survival, but also their thriving. We want to lay the groundwork for the fully automated queer luxury space anarchist future.
We take a few inspirations for this project. Of note are Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality, Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway and The Jubilee: Fill Your Boots, Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics, and Marcin Jakubowski’s Global Village Construction Set.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but is probably a good start, especially if you want inspiration.