Who knows how to make a pencil?
In 1958 the Economist Leonard E Read wrote his essay "I, Pencil". In it he proposed that there was not a single person on the planet who knew how to, or had the skills to make a pencil. Initially it sounds like a ridiculous statement to make, but actually as you read further you begin to understand what he means.
As a society we have become so interdependent that we have surpassed the capacity of the human brain. As a result our cities have become interconnected by a dense network of various forms of infrastructure - roads, rail, cables, satellites - and we function on a just-in-time logistics model that is seemingly efficient, although in actual fact it is far from it.
Increasingly, this infrastructure is created for non-corporeal uses i.e. the Internet. As the internet becomes more and more integrated into our lives, so too does our ability to work together. We are becoming increasingly inter-reliant to the extent that a new form of non-capitalist economy is emerging in the form of open-source working. This provokes the question; is there a way of rooting this kind of online collaboration back into the physical realm? Also, can this be done in a way that is up to the fast pace of change, and that is socially and environmentally beneficial?
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