and standards and online services that make it easier for communities to add metadata to design information and to use that metadata to do "cradle to cradle" design and take part in the emerging Semantic Web and related Social Semantic Desktop and to cooperate with other free and open source communities with similar interests. For example, building a greenhouse might require plate glass windows, a metal frame, a concrete foundation, insulation, a furnace, clay pots, fasteners, tools for assembly, and many other things. Making plate glass may require a furnace, sand, a rolling mill, and many other things. A furnace may require coal, iron, and other things. The increasing complexity rapidly exceeds what the unaided human mind can easily follow. While one should never underestimate the power of the unaided human imagination, tools can still help in supporting and amplifying that imagination. Imagine having a digital library of designs and procedures with lots of metadata about each item or task and its dependencies. One could look up information on all the diverse component parts of a greenhouse like the plate glass, frame, foundation, and fasteners. Then one could explore components such as the plate glass in detail (or alternatives like plastic), and all the technology required to create them. The software would display graphical networks of such relationships and provide opportunities to try "what if" scenarios of different designs to analyze environmental footprint or risk of failure. With powerful enough information management tools, one could invent technological webs that are simpler, more robust, or more sustainable. Such a web might consist of products that were more secure, self-reliant, self-replicating, durable, low cost, non-polluting, energy efficient, evolving, and pleasant to use. For example, it might have at its base solar collectors, windmills, renewable fuels, and organic farming. The system could help answer questions like, "What do we need for such a technology and what don't we need?" One could analyze the implications of technological zoning guidelines like the Amish have within their communities or of a society that is "Carbon Neutral". Imagine what Bucky would do with tools like that. Or the rest of us.

Describe the current stage of your initiative and your implementation plan over the next three years

OSCOMAK currently is running as a Halo Semantic MediaWiki at http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Main_Page but it has little content. A solid effort needs to be made to add content to the point where it reaches a critical mass to be useful worldwide (the same as Wikipedia needed before it became useful and interesting enough for others to improve). From using the OSCOMAK website, it is clear that a client desktop application is important as a next step, because of issues like liability, privacy, scalability, simulation, 3D graphics, analysis, and ease of development.

The BFI prize could support me for about three years working half-time to improve the software, add content, and help manage the community. Beyond the money, the attention from receiving the BFI prize would boost the project as a hub of open manufacturing collaboration. After that, donations, grants, and perhaps offering related services or advertising could help support the effort.

Ideally, in the very long term, OSCOMAK would contribute to a change in the entire economic landscape to become more of a post-scarcity "gift economy" where it could easily be supported by society out of universal abundance. In any case, since all the work will be done under free licenses, anybody will be able to continue to expand the work. That's an important part of being free -- anyone can take the ideas forward to the next level.

I will build the initial software infrastructure for design and simulation, add content, do some promotion of the idea, provide technical support, and manage the software and databases through multiple versions of improvements. But this project will require partners to play an active role to help manage a growing community of communities. I feel confident I can "build it", but I will need organizational help from more extroverted people who like running communities, to keep things going when "they come". There are several related projects which have been building collections of content; it is my hope to reach out to them to provide a more advanced technical infrastructure than they currently have.

Describe how your strategy meets the entry criteria ("What We're Looking For")

OSCOMAK would make Design Science easier. So, it indirectly meets all the criteria by supporting others who are working towards those goals, whether on BFI supported projects, Appropedia or other previous BFI Challenge entries, or OpenVirgle and other "open manufacturing" initiatives around the web. Each project could help define new requirements for OSCOMAK.

A flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next few decades:
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223
TV watching is consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258
Clearly, money and time are not limiting factors for "Humanity's Option for Success".

Information about how to make things is like encyclopedic information was before Wikipedia became popular - either in people's heads, on paper, or on scattered web sites in incompatible formats with incompatible licenses. The information is not readily useable for simulation or network analysis. OSCOMAK is about using a small amount of money to leverage trillions of dollars worth of volunteer labor and charitable dollars to rebuild sustainably.

Information about, say, semi-autonomous homesteads will help build the semantic web of manufacturing information captured in OSCOMAK. Eventually, bigger things like networks of semi-autonomous space habitations can be worked on, to house trillions of people in the solar system in style.

Describe the qualifications and experience of you and/or your team and your ability to execute your implementation plan

I have been programming since the 1970s. I have co-developed several small and medium-sized pieces of software from idea to implementation to new versions (CAI, garden simulator, evolutionary design tools, story networks, the IDE -- all the images linked here were drawn from these projects).

I received an undergraduate degree from Princeton in (Cognitive) Psychology, and a Master's degree from SUNY Stony Brook in Quantitative Applied Ecology. I have participated in several open source communities. I have been working towards the ideas outlined here for about twenty-five years, mostly inspired by the idea of designing a self-replicating space habitat. That challenge led me to consider a variety of design and sustainability issues, while gradually broadening the scope of my efforts to shorter-term, down-to-earth projects, culminating in developing a garden simulator as a first step towards space settlements (since we all have to eat).

While I have worked towards the OSCOMAK vision for a long time, it has always been a side project as other things got in the way. Along the way I have worked on ideas (Pointrel)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
which are now talked about in terms of RDF, the semantic web, WordNet, and the social semantic desktop.

Here is a related paper presented in 2001 at the Space Studies Institute conference:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html