What is an open artifact?

An artifact is any kind of human-designed tool, technique or technology. Most of what we know about ancient civilizations comes from studying the artifacts they left behind. Our modern world is filled with the artifacts of our time, from buildings and technologies to our laws, governments, art and music.

In our competitive society, the ideas and principles behind many of our most important artifacts are kept hidden from the general public in the name of “intellectual property.” In direct opposition to this trend, an open artifact (OA) is an artifact that is shared with all humanity in the interest of cooperation. To borrow the phrase from the open source software (OSS) movement, it’s an artifact that is free in the sense of free speech, not free beer. The open artifacts movement is an extension of the Open Source software development model. It’s an attempt to apply the concept of open collaboration beyond the computer industry and into all systems related to human survival and the survival of the planet.

While the current systems we use to survive on the planet have brought unparalleled success to many people, they still don’t take care of everyone, nor do they work within the Earth’s systems well enough to be sustainable. Open artifacts are a way for all of us to collaboratively improve how we operate the world. The goal is to move humanity in the direction of life-sustaining world systems that will allow us to survive and thrive far into the future.

The open artifacts concept

The open artifacts concept comes out of a desire to find a way to help individuals and small groups of people work together toward making the world work for all humanity. There are many kinds of people in the world with many different skills and experiences, and while each of them may have the desire to help, they don’t all have the time, resources, or vision to make something happen by themselves. Open artifacts are intended to bring together people with similar goals so that as a group, they can combine their skills and efforts to create something better than they could have done individually.

Open source software has proven to be very successful in creating world-class software. The idea is simply that projects are organized and made available online for anyone to use. Anyone can also contribute to the project as well—making improvements, pointing out errors, or supplying any other needed work.

Goals of an open artifacts project

An OT3 project is intended to do several things.

• It sets up an idea or a design so that it can undergo continuous improvement. A “finished design” is simply the latest working version, and the open artifacts team should always be looking for ways to improve it.

• It makes it possible for multiple people, from anywhere in the world, to contribute to the project.

• It makes the design available to the general population, helping to match a solution with the people who need it.

Ideally, an open artifacts project should be designed in a way that it can be modified according to local needs. Complex designs are rarely one-size-fits-all, so an open artifact should be designed with adaptation to local conditions in mind. That might mean designing a series of artifacts that operate under different conditions, or it might mean presenting the information in a form that lets each group create a unique design for their needs.

Types of open artifacts projects

At its most basic, an open artifacts project is an organized effort to develop a high quality tool, technique or technology that helps solve a problem, and to make it freely available to the public. The visible result of a project is some kind of usable object or artifact.

An artifact can be almost anything. For example, it might be a machine, a book or instruction booklet, proposed legislation, a lesson plan, a game, a website, a computer program, or an organization. The artifact is made freely available in electronic form such that it can either be built from the available information or used directly.

A project should have a stated purpose or goal such as “to design a high-efficiency adobe house.” The project members would work toward that goal and make their work available to others in a form that can be used to build the house. In this case, it might take the form of complete building plans, material lists, and detailed instructions, all made available for download online.

Getting started

Whether you’re looking for a way to contribute your knowledge to a project or you want to build an existing project and make it available to your community, this site is intended to help you find wwhat you need.