What is the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS)?

From the FAQ.

The GVCS is like a life-sized Lego set in which motors, parts and power units can interchange. We are building new machines by recombining existing technologies. The GVCS is designed to become a fully integrated set of machines for creating a self-sufficient modern life from the resources of a small amount of land.

There are 3 levels of the GVCS, each with progressively more complex technologies and more independence. The first level is building the 50 tools above. These are essentially complete products, produced from off-the-shelf components bought from elsewhere. GVCS II focuses on producing components. GVCS III focuses on producing raw materials to produce the components. Each level does more of the production with local materials until ultimately we end up being able to make metals and semiconductors - the basic ingredients of a high-tech civilization - from local minerals.

The construction of the first GVCS, while cheaper than its commercial counterparts, is taking a significant amount of outside investment and resources. However, the set is designed to be self-replicable. This means that the cost of building subsequent sets will be much lower, a feature that may make the GVCS a feasible option for those living in poverty. A bigger hurdle is cultivating the skill sets needed to construct and maintain the GVCS. Innovative solutions are needed to facilitate a widespread adoption of the GVCS.

From the 2012 Proposal Proposal_2012_Outline

The GVCS is an open source construction set for creating civilization with modern day comforts. The GVCS includes machines, equipment, tools, components, and other infrastructures for creating a complete economy: food, fuel, energy, building materials, transportation, materials, fabrication. Since most of the GVCS is a machine of some kind, we generally refer to the GVCS as a set of machines, even though the GVCS includes items such as Bakery, Dairy, and Agricultural Nursery.

The GVCS aims to simplify, modularize, and make transparent the critical technologies used by humans. The scope of this is to make technology user-friendly to the extent that all of our technology base functions like a life-size Lego set that people can use, play with, adapt, and maintain. Thus, the central question of this work is the development of an unprecedented user-friendly interface to common technologies, which to date have been operated and maintained by specialized 'wrench-turners' or technicians. We are demonstrating the limits of modularization and simplification of technology – without compromising performance – towards the goal of creating user-friendly modules or 'black boxes' of functionality. It is not required that the user know the inner workings of these modules, but it is critical that the user understand the resulting functionality, range of use, and other properties that allow the user to combine these modules into working wholes – in the nature of a life-size Lego set for real technology. This applies to mechanical devices (ex., cars and bulldozers), electromechanical devices (ex., windmills and solar turbines), electrical devices (ex., renewable energy equipment and laser cutters), computer automation (ex., computer-controlled machining and robotic arms), and materials processing (ex., induction furnace and hot metal rolling). The goal is to reskill people towards self-sufficiency, without giving up the advantages of the division of labor and without giving up the trappings of modern civilization (ex, internet and airplanes).

One of the central themes in this work is that we are in the Age of Substitutability (ref). This means that scarce and strategic resources may be replaced by ubiquitous and common resources – under the assumption that we have access to the enabling information and to energy1. Substitutability further implies that any toxic, centralized, industrial process has a completely benign, closed-loop, small-scale, open source, ecological variant.