Peer Production and Desktop Manufacturing

Some Fundamental Characteristics of CBPP

According to Benkler (2006), CBPP is a more productive system for information than the market-based or the “bureaucratic-state” systems. It produces social well-being because it is based on people’s intrinsic positive motivations (for instance, the need to create, learn, and communicate) and synergetic cooperation among participants and users (Benkler 2006; Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann 2003; Lakhani and Wolf 2005). As Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann (2003, 1174) mentioned in their study of the incentives of 141 Linux kernel community participants, the former were driven “by similar motives as voluntary action within social movements such as the civil rights movement, the labor movement, or the peace movement.” Benkler makes two intriguing economic observations which challenge some “eternal truths” of the so-called Standard Textbook Economics (STE) model. Commons-based projects fundamentally challenge the STE assumption—today often theoretically softened but practically still ubiquitous—that in economic production, the human being solely seeks profit maximization. Volunteers contribute to information production projects, gaining knowledge, experience, and reputation and communicating with each other, motivated by intrinsically positive incentives. This does not mean that the monetary motive is totally absent; however, it is relegated to being a peripheral concept only (Benkler 2006).

The second challenge is directed against the conventional wisdom that, in Benkler’s (2006, 463) words, “we have only two basic free transactional forms—property-based markets and hierarchically organized firms.” CBPP can be considered a third way, and it should not be treated as an exception but rather as a widespread phenomenon, which, however, is not currently counted in the economic census (Benkler 2006). In STE terms, what is happening in CBPP can be considered, as Bauwens (2005) maintains, “only in the sense that individuals are free to contribute, or take what they need, following their individual inclinations, with a [sic] invisible hand bringing it all together, but without any monetary mechanism.” Hence, in contrast to markets, in CBPP the allocation of resources is not done through a market-pricing mechanism, but hybrid modes of governance are employed, and what is generated is not profit, but use value, that is, a Commons (Bauwens 2005).

Following Bauwens (2005, 2009), CBPP is based on practices that stand in contrast to those of the market-based business firm. More specifically, CBPP is opposed to industrial firms’ hierarchical control and authority and is rather based on communal validation and negotiated coordination (see, for instance, Dafermos’ (2012) study on the Free BSD project’s collectivist and consensus-oriented governance system) as quality control is community-driven and conflicts are solved through an ongoing mediated dialogue (e.g., in Wikipedia, the dialogue takes place in the discussion page of each article). However, in cases such as in the internal battle between inclusionists and deletionists, Wikipedia’s lack of a clearly defined constitution led a small number of participants to create rules in conflict with others: persistent, well-organized minorities adroitly handled their opponents seriously challenging the sustainability of the project (Kostakis 2010). Thus, it has to be stressed that when abundance is replaced by scarcity (as happened in Wikipedia when deletionists demanded a strict content control), power structures emerge because CBPP mechanisms cannot function well (Kostakis 2010). Moreover, investigating prominent CBPP projects, O’Neil (2009) analyzed the tensions generated by the distribution of authority and showed that it is important to discuss openly how power and authority actually work in CBPP in order to be able to arrange differently. His proposal is that leaders must support maximum autonomy for participants toward a more egalitarian situation. Of course, a special characteristic of CBPP is that if these benevolent dictators (Kostakis 2010) abuse their power, their leadership becomes malicious and a substantial exodus of community members often happens. These members, however, due to the low marginal costs of information, are free to start their own new project, using the already Commons-based peer produced information if they wish.

Further, CBPP is not driven by the for-profit orientation that defines market projects, as peer projects have a for-benefit orientation, creating use value for their communities. This does not mean that in CBPP projects, the profit motive is totally absent, but rather, that incentives such as learning, communication, and experience come to the fore (as applies in the case of Helix_T project)—and that is actually how the human person actually operates, rather than the imagined homo oeconomicus of STE. Besides, Hess’ (2005, 515) “private-sector symbiosis” hypothesis outlines that the emphasis on technology and product innovation can lead “to the articulation of social movements goals with those of inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrial reformers” (2005, 516). Therefore, “a cooperative relationship emerges between advocacy organizations that support the alternative technologies/products and private sector firms that develop and market alternative technologies” (Hess 2005, 516).

For example, the case of Linux and IBM comes in accordance with Hess’ argument for the private sector symbiosis and subsequent incorporation and transformation of the technologies which may provoke, though, an object conflict. “As the technological/product field undergoes diversification,” Hess (2005, 515) writes, object conflicts “erupt over a range of design possibilities, from those advocated by the more social movement-oriented organizations to those advocated by the established industries.” It can be claimed that an object conflict is taking place concerning the Makerbot’s Replication 2 3D printer which is partly closed source and this may lead, say, to the loss of Makerbot community (Giseburt 2012). The core technologies remain open source, according to Makerbot cofounder Bre Pettis; but on the other hand, because open source hardware entails considerable marginal costs and some kind of entrance barriers, open hardware businesses must be careful about what they open source and what not (Pettis 2012).

Instead of the division of labor in CBPP, a distribution of modular tasks takes place with anyone able to contribute to any module, while the threshold for participation is as low as possible. And it is opposed to the rivalry (scarcity of goods) through which market profit is generated, as sharing the created goods does not diminish the value of the good, but actually enhances it (Bauwens 2005; Benkler 2006). To this, one might add that CBPP is facilitated by free, unconstrained, and creative cooperation of communities, which lowers the legal restrictive barriers to such an exchange, inventing new institutionalized ways of sharing, such as the Creative Commons, the Berkeley Software Distribution, or the General Public Licenses (Kostakis 2011a, 2011b, 2012). In terms of property, the Commons is an idea different from state (public) property, where the state manages a certain resource on behalf of the people, and from private property, where a private entity excludes the common use of it (Kostakis 2009, 2011b, 2012).

It is, however, important to highlight that the contributors of CBPP projects do have interests and rights concerning their work and are interested in protecting their intellectual property (O’Mahony 2003). Thus, the Commons-oriented approach to property “does not assert that sharing is an ethical absolute” (after all everyone is, or should be, free to choose what type of license they will adopt), but tries to manage to balance the rights of innovators with the rights of the public (O’Mahony 2003; von Hippel and von Krogh 2003).

It becomes obvious that what sets CBPP apart from the proprietary-based mode of production—the “industrial one” (Benkler 2006)—is its modes of governance (consensus-oriented governance mechanisms) and of property (communal shareholding), whose foundation stones are the abundance of resources, openness, and the power of meaningful human cooperation. These are the very characteristics of CBPP that provide the capacity to deliver genuinely innovative, remarkable results (thus contesting allegations of low quality: see only Keen 2007; Lanier 2010), such as the Apache web server, Mozilla Firefox browser, Linux kernel, BIND (the most widely used DNS software), and Sendmail (router of the majority of e-mail).

Of course, beyond the great potential of CBPP, there may well be numerous obstacles, theoretical and practical problems, and negative side effects. However, taken in this idealized context, CBPP arguably carries some aspects which create a political economy where economic efficiency, profit, and competitiveness cease to be the sole guiding stars (Moore and Karatzogianni 2009), while civil society attains a more important role, bringing (back) the notion of cooperation into the very heart of the economy (Orsi 2009).

The Convergence of CBPP and 3D Printing and the Small-scale Energy Producers

Rifkin (2011) observes the emergence of small-scale energy producers and cooperatives, which could generate their own renewable energies in their places and trade or share surpluses in info-energy Commons. For example, see initiatives such as the Nordic Folkecenter (2012) from Denmark (Mercier and Jean 2006) or Barefoot College (2012) in India, which are developing small-scale energy production practices. The latter focuses specifically on providing basic services and solutions to the problems of rural communities, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable. CBPP approaches to the development of small-scale, autonomous energy production are also followed by open design communities such as the nonprofit organization Onawi (2012) from England or Nea Guinea (2012) from Greece.

Carlota Perez’s TEPS theory (Perez 1983, 2002, 2009) would predict such a shift from giant fossil fuel–based energy companies to small producers (Rifkin 2011), because the traditional, highly centralized mode of energy production would have to be modernized (in the sense of updated or brought to accommodate the special characteristics of the current ICT-based paradigm). A convergence of CBPP practices in designing, sharing, and improving blueprints, along with desktop manufacturing capabilities, could be such a modernization and thus would underscore the general importance of autonomous energy production. Desktop manufacturing could arguably allow for autonomous and decentralized design and manufacturing of useful tools and equipment for producing energy.

Rapid prototyping machines or “3D printing”—actually a subset of additive manufacturing—is, in short, the process of joining material, layer by layer, to make objects from 3D model data (usually created by a computer-aided design software or a scan of an existing object), in contrast to subtractive manufacturing technologies (American Society for Testing and Materials 2010). This technological capability, now more than thirty years old, is called rapid because one-offs could be made more easily and quickly than by the conventional numerically controlled machines and it was called prototyping because it was too slow and expensive to be used for production (Bradshaw, Bowyer, and Haufe 2010; Campbell et al. 2011). For example, an architect could print in 3D the design of a building or an automobile engineer could print a prototype of a part from the car for further refinement of the design. The rise of relatively cheap (€500–€1300) desktop 3D printers, such as RepRap, MakerBot Replicator 1, or Ultimaker (Kalish 2011) have allowed hobbyists and adopters of the do-it-yourself (DIY) culture to experiment, design, and produce things moving gradually from “prototyping” to “manufacturing.” However, lately 3D printers have been adopted, especially by aerospace and health care industries (Bullis 2011), to make functional products.

A strategic advantage of 3D printing is that it is capable of fabricating more complicated and intricate shapes than any other primary manufacturing technology (Bradshaw, Bowyer, and Haufe 2010) without the need of an inventory of new products, spare parts, and retooling (Campbell et al. 2011). Thus, it lowers the risk and the costs as well, as it reduces production constraints and barriers for entry into the business. 3D printing offers the geometrical freedom in engineering design and thus new chances exist for design in diverse industries such as aerospace, automotive, and bioengineering (Campbell et al. 2011). Moreover, this technological process reduces waste and harmful chemicals while offering the possibility to use recycled materials (Campbell et al. 2011) such as the common recyclable thermoplastic acrylonitrile, butadiene, styrene (ABS; Adams, Colborn, and Buckley 1993; Ashby and Johnson 2002; Biron 2007).

Further, 3D printing customizes and localizes production, lowering the need for an assembly line, reducing transportation and the carbon footprint. Finally, nanotechnology offers the potential to advance 3D printing materials through modification of their fundamental material properties, creating an increasing variety of novel materials: from metal and carbon nanoparticles (the latter can be used even for bone tissue engineering) to ceramics and semiconductors nanomaterials (Campbell et al. 2011). A recent project at the University of Glasgow shows that it is even possible to create chemical compounds, including new ones, using 3D printing technology with a low-cost open source printer such as the Fab@Home (Symes et al. 2004). In other words, this means that techniques from chemical engineering are made accessible to typical synthetic laboratories (Symes et al. 2004).

3D printing is predicted to continue to improve in capability, efficiency, and accuracy, and to use a wider range of materials (Atkinson 2006). The final frontier in 3D printing is “to introduce functional as well as structural materials, in order to print complete working systems,” creating “one machine that can make anything” (Gershenfeld 2007). It is not, however, the only technology that can boost desktop manufacturing. Laser cutting and different kinds of milling machines or open hardware products, such as the microcontroller Arduino or the global village construction set of the Open Source Ecology project (discussed below), make it possible “to make (almost) anything” and develop solutions to local problems (Gershenfeld 2007).

The expansion of CBPP practices into physical production could arguably create networks of individual producers, cooperatives, nonprofit foundations, and for-profit companies which would work globally but produce locally. Of course, CBPP practices could not just be copied to and applied in the open design and open manufacturing realm without alteration, but must take into consideration the constraints of the material world (Troxler 2011). It seems that the desktop manufacturing technological capabilities will be related to a plethora of different models that may embrace various aspects of CBPP, “with users switching between different models as appropriate” (Troxler 2011, 94).

In contrast to the industrial paradigm whose competitive dynamics were about economies of scale, CBPP and desktop manufacturing, with the support of nanotechnology on the material level, could develop economies of scope. While the advantages of scale rest on cheap global transportation, which is facing problems because of the increasing oil prices and the environmental crisis (Rifkin 2011), economies of scope share infrastructure costs (intangible and tangible productive resources), taking advantage of the capabilities of the fabrication tools. Recognizing that “some of the least developed parts of the world need some of the most advanced technologies” (Gershenfeld 2007, 13-14), CBPP and desktop manufacturing may be the globally imagined tools that act locally (Perez 2002) in response to certain problems and needs, such as addressing the need for energy via small-scale energy production.

On the other hand, 3D printing processes have numerous drawbacks. To mention a few, they are limited for mass materials production purposes since, on average, they can create a 1.5 in. cube in about an hour (Campbell et al. 2011). Moreover, most 3D printing processes use proprietary polymers which are weaker than their traditionally manufactured counterparts, and the layer-by-layer fabrication process means that part strength is not uniform (Campbell et al. 2011). 3D printing processes repeatability needs improvement since parts made on different machines may have different properties (Campbell et al. 2011). Also, the expansion of desktop manufacturing technologies make weapons manufacturing easier since guns, bullets, bombs, and so on, could become cheaper, more accessible; not to mention that they could be more easily disguised (Campbell et al. 2011).

Overall, we assume for the current context that “the real issue is not technology per se, but the variety of possible technologies and paths of progress among which we must choose,” (Feenberg 2002, v) trying not to be limited to a dichotomy between two polarized extremes (those who claim that technology is neutral and those who think that technology is malicious and threatening to humanity). For Feenberg (2002, 15), “technology is not a destiny but a scene of struggle … a social battlefield”, where individuals and social groups struggle to influence and change technological design, uses, and meanings (Feenberg 1999), and that is of course the case whether actually one of the two extremes just mentioned would be objectively correct or not. Our article attempts to show that a different form of social organization, as documented in the production processes of CBPP, is capable of emphasizing “other attributes of technology compatible with a wider distribution of cultural qualifications and powers” (Feenberg 2002, 35). In the conjunction of CBPP with desktop manufacturing, technology could be considered as subject to contestation, reconstruction, and democratic participation (Feenberg 1999) enabling people “to participate effectively in a widening range of public activities” (Feenberg 2002, 3).

Introduction to the Case

Glover (2006, 265), examining the first attempt to develop wind power from below in the 1970s, states that “renewable energy as a social solution has been doomed” to ask “what will be the transforming effect, if, in the not too distant future, such systems are easily ordered (perhaps from the Internet)?” (p. 266). The Helix_T project, with regard to Glover’s concerns, tries to show that new means of production, such as the ICT and the emerging desktop manufacturing capabilities, could make possible not only the independent production of information but also the independent production of energy, even in such an infancy form.

The primary goal of the Helix_T wind turbine project—which was one of the authors’ thesis at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Cataluña (IAAC)—was to challenge the cost-effective ratio of small-scale wind turbines and to contribute to the debate about autonomous energy production at a low-cost, residential scale. It is important to highlight that the initiator of the Helix_T project is an architect/artist with an interest in elegant and operating design but with, at that time, almost no knowledge of mechanics. Thus, the second goal, set by necessity, was to see in which degree someone with a novel idea/plan, but without all the required skills for its effective and efficient implementation, can benefit from collaborating with dispersed, online open source/knowledge communities while using free/open source tools. In that way, it could be argued that not only the costs would be minimized but also the initial idea of the project could advance through social production processes.

While in many countries the sun shines for many hours per day, wind power on the other hand is more stochastic in terms of force as well as direction. Hence, the first question that was raised was whether wind turbines could be located in places where they can produce more power. Or to put it differently, what if we turned small-scale wind turbines into more of an urban grid, small power-producing devices? And for rural places, what if we develop modular small-scale wind turbines that could be combined to create a module that is larger and able to generate more power?

Studying the cases of artistic interventions in the city landscape such as the work of the Jason Burges Studio (2007, 2008) with the “wind to light” and “Aeolian tower” projects, the work of the circuit designer Yoshihiro Shimomura such as the “wind-it LEDs” (Meinhold 2008), the “Canopy” project by the United Visual Arts (2011), and the “flow project” (Vasquez 2010), it became evident that the wind turbine technology on a small scale could help an urban environment if it dealt with a smaller power-producing expectancy and at a targeted area of interest. These “areas of interest” are areas in the city landscape that normally have steady and powerful-enough winds fields throughout the year. Take, for example, narrow, long alleys, long hallways in buildings, metro entrances, metro tubes, big ventilation exhausts, and in general spaces that create air pathways due to shape or air pressure difference. By targeting these specific locations, one could make use of nonexploited wind and cover small energy needs at those specific locations.

Another question to deal with was whether, and how, it was possible to take advantage of the potential synergies of CBPP products and processes with desktop manufacturing. In other words, an additional goal was to use desktop manufacturing capabilities as well as CBPP products and processes to reduce the production costs of the wind turbine and at the same time to enhance its design and effectiveness, making it cheaper and friendlier to the environment while contributing a design blueprint to the Commons. Thus, to summarize, the aim of the Helix_T turbine project was to create an experimental wind turbine prototype that could be collaboratively developed globally and manufactured locally giving small amounts of clean energy when placed, for example, in urban spaces that could be called wind power dumpsters, or even when placed in rural places, especially concerning its sunflower-style combined mode as we discuss below.

Design and Fabrication

Our first attempt was to experiment with some basic wind turbine morphologies to see what kind of power could be achieved, and how, with amateur low-cost design. At that time, we had no knowledge of technical nature other than some basic mathematics on how the wind can be collected. Many wind turbine designs were found through extensive research in open source and DIY web platforms, such as the Instructables web platform where users can share what they make and tap into a community of creative experts. In that way, we came in contact with these online communities and several designers who had more technical knowledge. This allowed us simultaneously to learn by peers while learning by doing. In that way, quickly enough the design started to improve, so that it could be more efficient in terms of shape and analogies corresponding to the desired energy ratio.

In order to gain a better insight, at this point, it would be helpful to note that there are mainly two types of wind turbines, the horizontal axis design and the vertical axis design (Bowles, Rollins, and Hawks 1979; Coton, Galbraith, and Jiang 1996; Hemami 2012; Manwell, McGowan, and Rogers 2010). There are various advantages and disadvantages to each design (Coton, Galbraith, and Jiang 1996; Hemami 2012; Manwell, McGowan, and Rogers 2010), but these do not matter for the aims of the current article. It is important to mention, though, that since wind direction is a random element, horizontal axis wind turbines lose efficiency when not aligned with the wind direction. A key advantage of the vertical arrangement of the main rotor shaft is that the wind turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind to be effective. So we decided to begin with a simple Savonius design, which is a type of vertical axis wind turbine named after its inventor, the Finnish engineer S. J. Savonius (1884–1931; Modi and Fernando 1989; Sargolzaei and Kianifar 2009; Wagner and Mathur 2009).

The first tests were run using the exhaust pipe of a huge laser cutter machine. It was a 15-cm radius pipe that constantly blew air at the back of IAAC’s facilities. It can be claimed that this process could take place in other areas that have the same kind of steady wind flow in different parts of a city. The first results produced around 5 W of potential power. The design was not evolved enough and the Savonius style did not seem to help capturing the constant flow of the wind. Thus, we decided to experiment with our prototype’s design and partly change it to Darrieus, which is also a type of vertical axis wind turbine invented by the French aeronautical engineer G. J. M. Darrieus (1888–1979). Because of the setting and attributes of the wind source, we managed to have a steady flow of around 4 m/s (in Barcelona, the city where the tests were run, the annual wind speed ratio is around 3–4 m/s, according to gaisma.com [2012]). Running the calculations, it became obvious that with this design, it was possible to get around 10 W of power. Considering the power consumption of various everyday objects, this kind of power could charge, for example, 3 AA batteries or power 9,000 LEDs (3 mm diameter) or four smartphone chargers or a home Wi-Fi router.

Using a 3D printer in the process was of great importance to the Helix_T project, and it had significant implications for the design of the wind turbine, as it had to become quite modular (Figure 1). We started using the RepRap, which is a 3D printer that can print most of its components and is distributed under the Commons-oriented GNU General Public License (Jones et al. 2011). The RepRap, designed by Adrian Bowyer and his team, was an ideal choice since it is the first open source 3D printer that can be built by almost anyone at a cost of approximately €500 in hardware and parts (Jones et al. 2011). To put the matter bluntly, if one has access to mechanical hardware parts, such as screws and metallic rods, one could make a RepRap 3D printer with almost zero cost. The number of RepRaps has been growing around the world since the initiation of the project in 2005: over 4,500 had been reproduced in a period of only thirty months, according to estimates by Jones et al. (2011). We then had also the chance in the IAAC’s laboratory to use a more professional, high-end, 3D printer by Hewlett-Packard as well as the open source Makerbot, whose source of inspiration was the RepRap project (Pettis 2011). It is possible to watch on YouTube (2010) the 3D printing of the first version of our wind turbine’s structure by a Makerbot. At the time of this writing (May 2013), there are many more low-cost models that can be used in the same, if not better, manner.

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Figure 1.

The modular parts of the Helix wind turbine. All are to be printed except for the motor.

Working simultaneously with both open source and proprietary 3D printers, it became clear that the results were more or less the same on the scale that mattered to us (Figure 2). In addition, all these machines were using ABS plastic, which is very strong and relatively lightweight (Adams, Colborn, and Buckley 1993; Ashby and Johnson 2002; Biron 2007). Moreover, we used also polylactide acid, a biodegradable thermoplastic derived from natural lactic acid (Ashby and Johnson 2002), in order to have a less negative impact on the environment while its quality was almost the same with ABS concerning our wind turbine’s function.

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Figure 2.

(a) The first three dimensional (3D) printed modular parts. (b) Different kinds of gears.

We then maximized the collection area of the Helix_T wind turbine and had to adjust the design to be printable by the maximum dimensions of a low-cost 3D printer. This provided a collection area large enough to theoretically harvest power up to 20 W, dependent on wind speed. The Helix_T wind turbine (Figure 3) is 34-cm long and its marginal cost of production is approximately €40–100 with an open source 3D printer, depending on print quality, the fee of the printers’ owner, and power of motors which have to be separately bought.

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Figure 3.

The Helix_T wind turbine V 1.00.

Modularity is at the heart of the Helix_T project, as the design was adjusted to be able to work singularly or in plural, according to its setting. In a house, it could be mounted virtually anywhere with the help of belt straps and screws. The bottom part is a safeguard for the batteries and some electronic parts such as converters that form a power storage system for times when the power is not used, or when it exceeds its consumption.

The assembly of the wind turbine is quite easy (Figure 4) and with the help of small screws, it could be fitted into a 3D printable mass harvesting, modular device that was inspired by the sunflower (Figure 5). In this way, up to ten small-scale wind turbines could be used both in parallel connection and in a row. For instance, with the use of Arduino microcontrollers (popular open source single-board microcontrollers designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible), it would be possible to create cooperation of modules that would arguably enhance the power production to its maximum. Such wind flowers could be planted in cities or in rural places, gathering power while giving an artistic vibe to squares, walkways, paths, or other points of interest at an urban or rural scale. In addition, the combination of artistic intervention into the city landscape with energy production, while the latter takes place in a subtle and arguably impressive way, was central to our project. For example, as several members of the open source communities commented, an even more elegant design could lead to wind gardens giving new aesthetic quality to spaces while producing power that could be used directly for the people or stored and given to different small power grids throughout the city. However, for the moment, the sunflower style (combined mode of several Helix_T wind turbines) has not been empirically realized, just theoretically, but this is a project on which we are currently working. Completing the circuit of the self-reproduction argument of this project, it is likely that such a sunflower could easily produce enough energy, with medium wind, for the popular open source 3D printer RepRap (theoretically speaking, under optimal conditions of steady and strong wind, even three Helix_T wind turbine modules could support the function of such a printer).

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Figure 4.

The assembly instructions document.

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Figure 5.

The sunflower-styled wind turbine consisted of ten small-scale wind turbines.