Every now and again a project comes along that could change everything. I’ve been lucky enough this year to come across two of them.

The first I wrote about in Seven facts about Unhosted. It has the potential to decentralised the web again, while simultaneously keeping it just as easy to use and powerful.

Today I’m writing about the Global Village Construction Set. It has the potential to decentralise our industrial society.

I tweeted about it every day last week. Here are the links:

• [ @OSEcology fact #1/7 ] finished 6 of 50 industrial machines that together bootstrap a small-scale civilization http://bit.ly/ppqJcW
• [ @OSEcology fact #2/7 ] there’s a TED talk on Global Village Construction Set; “hope to transcend artificial scarcity” http://bit.ly/o91Ap2
• [ @OSEcology fact #3/7 ] it’s open hardware (specs are Creative Commons / GNU FDL); anyone can make the machines (now or after apocalypse)
• [ @OSEcology fact #4/7 ] bricks for building are made in a Compressed Earth Block press, they’re tough http://bit.ly/p9hP4a
• [ @OSEcology fact #5/7 ] how to make a 2-axis CNC metal-cutting torch table; vital for build/repair of other parts http://bit.ly/pT7oos
• [ @OSEcology fact #6/7 ] GVCS is being tested at the “Factor e Farm”, a 30 acre site, 65 miles from Kansas City http://bit.ly/oCeBGd
• [ @OSEcology fact #7/7 ] it’s half crowdfunded – 420 “true fans” donate at least $10/month each, big donors too http://bit.ly/r1RbBW

We’re very separated from the material supply chain that feeds us, keeps us warm, keeps us healthy. This is fine while it continues to work. But we know that one day – maybe not this year, maybe not next year, maybe not in a hundred years – we know that one day it will fail.

In reasoning terms, that’s a fairly simple claim (one aspect is covered in the old book the Limits of Growth, or you can just reason that everything will one day end). Reason though isn’t enough to make a mind believe. For a personal, real experience version, I think of the financial crisis or the recent riots at the end of my street.

So yes, the Global Village Construction Set, if completed, is a kind of insurance policy against the fragility of our just-in-time civilisation.

You don’t need to be so forward thinking and selfish though to find value in it. For example, it’s potentially useful now to millions of people in the world who aren’t already living in material wealth. And there’s also another good reason I’ll explain…

The Global Village Construction Set is a challenge. Can we, together, design a complete set of tools that can be used to mutually repair and rebuild each other, and self-reliantly sustain a reasonably good standard of living?

That’s a fun goal!

How can you help them? You can become a true fan by donating just $10 a month. They use it to buy the equipment and skills they need to develop the machinery, and they open source the designs they make. Or you can get involved deeper.

It’s really easy to get used to business models. As if they were natural things that have always been there.

But actually, all the successful machines that make money were at one point extraordinary – inspired wonder when the first company found them.

Here are some recent examples:

1) Flickr. Invented “freemium” for SaaS on an at all large scale. Before then on the Internet you had to either buy things, or things were free.

2) Dropbox. It’s virality was geniunely new feeling. Sure, there were affiliate schemes and coupons before, but few things that were quite so financially linked to the business.

3) Github. Despite “freemium” branching out into other areas, everyone before github was either offering free open source code hosting OR selling private code hosting, not doing both in one company.

(I’ll get at least one comment pointing out earlier companies using the same models as some of those. That’s OK – different people will learn about different businesses first that hit on a certain method of success)

Many years ago I got reasonably far making a Subversion version control hosting service with Rufus. This was before Flickr or Github, and it just didn’t occur to us that it was possible to have a freemium model. Maybe servers were still too expensive for it to work, maybe we just weren’t as imaginative as the Flickr founders.

Going further back, there are endless interesting cases.

Imagine when somebody first thought of insurance, or owning a market in a city charging for stalls, or selling a leasehold on a property. Basic things that we do every day were once the wild ideas of genius entrepreneurs.

In the vast phase space of functional businesses, there are lots that are alien and strange, that nobody has tried yet, or nobody has tried well, or that only just now could work because of a change in technology or society.

A startup is a boat, hunting for them.