About
About
Origin
Rolando Zubirán, PhD is a Future Economics and Geotechnology Expert at Singularity University. His research studies how technology changes geography. He holds an MBA from the University of Oxford and a PhD in public policy, and he lives in Madrid.
He wrote and drew 50 Machines and set the order of the machines from published work on survival and appropriate technology. The first 50 machines are his. The tree stays open: others can add guides, and he reviews each one before it joins.
Why this book
50 Machines is a field manual. It shows 50 machines in the order you could build them. Each machine uses only what the machines before it make. The list starts with a pottery and brick kiln and ends with a relay computer.
Technology moves forward and helps people live better, but people also depend on it more every year. So it is worth understanding what starting over would mean. My son Mateo asks why and how everything works, and takes it apart to understand it. That is why I made 50 Machines. I think of Stealing Fire, by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, and of Prometheus, who gave fire and knowledge to humankind.
The order is my judgment. The main sources are Lewis Dartnell’s The Knowledge, Open Source Ecology’s Global Village Construction Set, Practical Action’s technical briefs, David Gingery’s books, and Hugh Piggott’s wind turbine plans. Each machine gets a score for lives saved, later machines that depend on it, labor saved, how easy it is to build, and how easy it is to keep running.
The tree starts with what keeps people alive: fire and clean water. The aim is to live well, not just long.
Each guide lists the parts, the steps, and a check for each step. These are the first 50 machines. The site stays as a record, and others can keep building on it.
Rolando Zubirán, PhD
