Ariadne Systems

What does it take to make the tools and materials to build and maintain the physical, biological, and emotional, mental, and spiritual life of the village? What's the "tech tree"?

Much of the work here has already been done. In particular, Marcin Jakubowski and co. are working on open-sourced blueprints for civilization at Open Source Ecology:

a modular, DIY, low-cost set of blueprints that enables fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

~ Global Village Construction Set

The set of fifty devices is very impressive:

3D Printer • 3D Scanner • Aluminum Extractor • Backhoe • Bakery Oven • Baler • Bioplastic Extruder • Bulldozer • Car • CEB Press • Cement Mixer • Chipper Hammermill • CNC Circuit Mill • CNC Torch Table • Dairy Milker • Drill Press • Electric Motor Generator • Gasifier Burner • Hay Cutter • Hay Rake • Heat Exchanger • Hydraulic Motor • Induction Furnace • Industrial Robot • Ironworker • Laser Cutter • Metal Roller • Microcombine • Microtractor • Multimachine • Nickel-Iron Battery • Pelletizer • Plasma Cutter • Power Cube • Press Forge • Rod and Wire Mill • Sawmill • Seeder • Soil Pulverizer • Solar Concentrator • Spader • Steam Engine • Tractor • Trencher • Truck • Universal Power Supply • Universal Rotor • Welder • Well-Drilling Rig • Wind Turbine

We will make use of some of those, but the whole set is more than we need for a minimal system.

If you watch the video "Open-sourced blueprints for civilization" (Youtube) you can see that the workshop needed to build some of these things is itself pretty involved. That's not meant as criticism— some things require complex tooling —but in the context of a minimal system we want to reduce the requirements as much as possible.