Embedded - 476: Sidetracked by Mining the Moon

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Lee Wilkins joined Chris and Elecia to talk about The Open Source Hardware Association, the Open Hardware Summit, and zine culture. The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) provides certification and support for creating open source hardware. The Open Hardware Summit is happening May 3-4, 2024. It is in Montreal, Canada. It also has many online components including a Discord and online Unconferece. All videos are available for later watching on YouTube.  Lee’s personal page is leecyb.org. Their zines are available in their shop.  Elecia mentioned enjoying There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings by Kenn Amdahl. Transcript

Welcome to Embedded. I am Alicia White alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Lee Wilkins, and we're going to talk about art and open source hardware and teaching, learning, writing, open source hardware summit, and or being a cyborg. Hi, Lee. Welcome. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met next weekend at the Open Hardware Summit? Well, I am an artist primarily. I do a lot of work with technology and exploring different ways technology can exist in the world. And I'm also a really big community advocate and,

you know, just like general community person. I'm really excited about bringing people together and making weird stuff. Cool. We want to do lightning round where we ask you short questions. And if we're behaving ourselves, we won't then ask why and how and all the other details until later. Are you ready? Yes. What is a cyborg? A cyborg is any time humans and technology come together. What senses do you wish you had?

I don't know. I, yeah, I have no answer for that question. There's no specific senses I wish I had. I am very content with my set of senses. Cool. Favorite fictional cyborg.

I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately, so I have to go with Seven of Nine. Favorite fictional space station? Ooh. Yeah, I don't know. They're all kind of bad. Like, a lot of bad or weird things happen on fictional space stations. I can't say that I want to be on any of them.

Do you like to complete one project or start a dozen? Definitely start a dozen. Do you have a complete one project or start a dozen? Definitely start a dozen. Do you have a favorite Lagrange point? Yeah, L4. I'm all about L4. Is that a stable one? I can never remember. It is. Okay. Favorite fictional robot, if we're not going to do space stations?

Oh, I don't know if I have one of those either. I don't know. I'm not a big, I'm truly not a big media person. I don't consume a whole ton of media. If you could teach a college course, what would you teach? Well, I, up until recently, have been teaching a college course, a university course, and it's called Cybernetics and Body-Centric Technology. Okay, we'll have to ask more about that. Yeah. That one just leads to a lot of other questions, doesn't it?

Do you have a tip everyone should know? Keep it weird. All right. That sounds like a tip, a t-shirt, a bumper sticker, and a general philosophy of life. It is. Yeah. So coming up very shortly, there is the Open Source Hardware Summit, or is it the Open Hardware Summit? How many sources need to be in there? The Open Hardware Summit. And you're the chair of that.

I am, yeah. I am extremely excited about this year's event. It's in Montreal? Mm-hmm. Did you have a hand in that? You're based in Canada, aren't you? Yeah, I'm based in Montreal. So we have been, well, a combination of being virtual and being in New York for the last many years. We're trying to take a couple of steps just to be a little bit more global and just expand our reach a little bit. So Canada seemed like a good, easy step.

And I'm pretty involved in the community here. So it seemed like a great location for us. And let's just make sure we get the dates right. When is it? It's May 3rd and 4th. Okay. So right after this show goes up, this is 2024, if anybody's listening to it later. And what are you most excited about? I, um, so I, I'm the primary organizer. I do all of the logistics. I do all of like the human wrangling and stuff. And I am honestly most excited to have

people in the same room and, uh, what some people call hallway con, which is not any of the specific things, but just like chatting with people in between sessions or like, you know, when you're going out to grab a coffee or something like that, like being with the community. I feel like there recently has been, you know, just a lot of divide in the places people are hanging out on the internet and just to like get a chance to chat with people about stuff they're curious about. I am unbelievably excited for that. Have you been going to a lot of in-person conferences lately? I haven't. I still feel like, you know, we're coming out of this kind of weird, weird state where people for a long time were unsure of how

to gather. So I think people, there's still a lot of momentum of people being really excited to be in the same room together. So I haven't personally been going to that many conferences, which is another reason why I'm so excited. Any talks that stand out that you are encouraging people to see live? Yeah, so I'm extremely excited about our keynote speaker, Danielle Boyer, who is an Indigenous roboticist, and she's using robots for Indigenous language revival. So that is super exciting to me. I love, first of all, just like, she has this cool aesthetic that she brings to robotics that I think gets a lot of young people and kids really interested and curious. And also just applications that we often don't see discussed when we talk about robotics. We see a lot of super important and amazing science or industry or all kinds of different other applications like that.

But I haven't seen that many companion bots used for language revival before. So I really love that creative application. So she's using the robots to help folks learn some of the indigenous languages. Yes, exactly. That's a neat application. Yeah, it's really cool. Like she also teaches, you know, at the same time, like people how to like 3D print and, you know, stuff about STEM. So it's really like a whole bunch of different skills coming together. Okay, so what else should I they wanted to go to talks or they wanted to go to workshops. So we're like, OK, no problem. We'll just make it two different days and now you don't have to choose. Um, it's just really, you know, you see people post on the internet or you maybe hear something that someone's working on a podcast, but it's not the same as like actually getting to like touch it and see it and do it for yourself. So we have a bunch of workshops, um, on day two that I am really excited about. And when I say be there, I won't be there. But you've always had a really good history of having a hybrid conference and

being available to those of us who aren't in the co-located spaces. How is that working this year? Yeah. So we really just want to be able to include as many people as possible. That's always the goal. And this year, we first have all of the talks streamed. All of the access to all of our stage talks will always be free and accessible on YouTube. So you can check that out either live as it's happening or all of the talks from previous years are also available. And on day two we have a unconference so we are going to be hosting unconference sessions which basically means that anyone can propose an idea that they want to talk about it can be about like um building community strategies it can be about like something super technical or like using a certain software or

trying to iterate on a certain project it could be really anything that you want to talk about you can propose it on our discord and then we vote on i think we have about 10 slots so we schedule unconference sessions throughout the day and people can pop in virtually and just like have these discussions with people. We have two different time zones. We have one time zone that will be better for people in Asia. And we have one time zone that's going to be better for people in the Americas.

So hopefully between those two time zones, you can find something all around the world that's going to be able to fit you. And yeah, we're just, I have no idea what people are going to propose.

And I'm excited to see what people want to chat about. Has that been done before at the open source conference? Well, last year we had about an hour on one of the days in person where we decided to have an unconference session. And people were just so excited to chat that we were supposed to have two sessions, but we literally couldn't stop people from talking to move them into another room. We were like, okay, guys, it's time for the second session. And they just wouldn't move. So we're like, okay, clearly people want this. So we're also going to have some in person, but like, why not extend it online, right? We have part of our goal with the summit is to be more global. So, you know,

why not utilize all of our capabilities to reach people virtually? And people virtually don't have to be like only consuming the content too, right? Like you can say, I'm going to attend the conference and you're like watching YouTube while you're doing your own thing. But like, we really wanted our virtual participants to like actually get to participate. And there's the Discord. So it's not like you're just watching YouTube and not participating. Yeah. You can talk.

Yeah, exactly. And anyone can join the Oshawa Discord. And, you know, there's discussions that happen year round. It's not just around the summit. You know, of course, there's discussions that happen year round. It's not just around the summit. You know, of course, we're like, we're doing a lot to make the summit really awesome. But there's also, you know, if you have like a hardware question, if you have a question about open source, if you just like want to find someone who's like interested in the same things, you can always post in the Discord and find like-minded people.

So Open Source Hardware Association, is that right? Yes. Open Source Hardware Association, OSHWA. When I first came across them, they seemed like an organization that was mostly about certifying boards to be open source and talking about how you open source boards, which is more than just putting a schematic up. It's also about the BOM

and the layout and all of that. But it seems like Oshawa has gone in a different direction. Is that just kind of my perception or what's up with Oshawa lately? Yeah, that's great. I mean, like the main thing we really do is certify projects. And one thing that I think is really important, while the absolute majority of the things that is certify projects. And one thing that I think is really important, while the absolute majority of the things that we certify are PCBs and boards and projects like that, any physical matter can be open source hardware. And I think that some of the concerns that we have with open source hardware are relatable to many other types like products or objects that people are creating, right? Like, how can we open source things in general? Um, but you know, there's obviously, and traditionally

has been a focus on, uh, on like electronics and hardware. So, um, we are, you know, I, when you say a different direction, I'm kind of curious what kind of tips you off to that. Because we're just trying to expand our community and kind of try to get new people involved while encouraging them and letting them know that you don't have to have a fully, fully certified 100% open source pure product or project in order to be a part of our community, right? There are definitely barriers. There's reasons why people are not there yet. We're here to help people at like any point they are in that process of learning or figuring it out or even like whether it's like figuring out how to like logistically share your project or whether you're figuring out, you know, like what kind of license you should use or like what does it really mean to open source your project and why you should care. So, you know, we're generally just trying to create a more broad stance and try to welcome new people in. I guess that actually was one of the things that's different.

I mean, not different. It was always welcoming. But meeting people where they are, the learning aspect, I mean, that's different. Oshawa, when it started, felt, I don't want to make a big division between professional and maker, but there is a bit of a division. Yeah. And it's, Oshawa has been more in the maker community, but it's also been more in the academic community and a little less present in the professional community. But again, my perceptions are what I read on the internet and my slice of the internet is very small because I

don't like the rest of it. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we always try to bridge all of these different communities as much as possible because we're really facing very similar types of challenges, right? So some of this has to do with past chairs and past organizers who have put their hand in the community in a very particular way. So if there is a chair of the summit who is really into academia or really into industry or really into the maker community, of course, you're going to be able to see that a little bit in the events of the summit and just generally the people who are congregating around Oshawa. But in general, we have always been welcoming to all of those groups and the unique perspective that they can all bring. Because it's really through talking together and overcoming these issues together that we will be able to really make open source hardware like a mainstream and normal thing. And you said it wasn't just electronics. You wanted everything to be open source.

Like thingy first? Or at least open sourceable. Yeah. I mean, that's the dream, right? You know, like we shouldn't be making information and access to tools and access to equipment artificially scarce when it doesn't need to be. Right. And the electronics community, like, you know, starting with the open source software community, this is something that we already have a lot of momentum for. We already have some like ideas around and it makes it a really great place to start and a really great place to explore. But when you look at all kinds of different technology, like our textiles technology,

you know, like is making, we have a workshop this year at the summit about making paper and make paper is definitely a technology, you know? So what stops that process from being open source versus, um, you know, how to make a sensor or how to make, you know, like a microcontroller or something like that. What are the challenges? So, I mean, from a software perspective, open source has been a thing for quite a long time. GNU has existed for a long time and there's, you know, various licenses that can be open source and people kind of understand that as a concept. And it doesn't seem like it's a huge step to go to like, okay, PCBs, they have artifacts that are basically software and we can put a license on them. What gets challenging when you move past that? Yeah, for sure.

So there is a whole other aspect of hardware that kind of has to do with like the physical fabrication of something. So for example, like you can post like an STL file, which is like a rendered 3D file, right? But you're not really open sourcing it just because someone can print it. Like how did you make that file? How did you get there? And like what is it about that that is your creation?

Is it like the mechanism? Is it like the physical aesthetic design? Is it, you know, the process used to create it? There are a bunch of different dimensions that kind of come into focus when you're making something in the real world and you want to be able to make it reproducible and you want to be able to make it identifiable and you want to be able to make it clear. There aren't that many tools that exist for easily documenting those processes. For example, GitHub is great for documenting your code.

You can upload your code, you can see the code that is there. But what about every thing that you could make is going to use a whole bunch of different kinds of files. It's going to have a whole bunch of different assembly steps. It's going to have schematics. It's going to have instructions. It's going to have tutorials and pictures and all kinds of different things. So a huge part of the community as well is trying to figure out how you could make

something reproducible and how you can document it in an effective way. So there's Hackaday and Hackster and Instructables. Yeah, but those aren't formal. Those are just places, right? Yeah. What is there? Yeah, I mean, those are some great examples of places that people document things. And I think it's an ongoing negotiation. You know, like a lot of people have been documenting things in different ways, like through YouTube videos, through GitHub, through Hackaday, through Hackster, through all of these different things. You know, through sharing things on forums, through making extensive PDFs. I think it's like a problem that people in our community are trying to tackle. And another thing that they're trying to focus on is just like realizing like who is your audience for creating all this documentation, right? So like, there's no way that like I can create

some kind of like advanced sensing mechanism and also expect anyone off the street to be able to make it, right? Like that's just simply unrealistic, right? So trying to figure out who is supposed to be making it and do they have the information that they need to make it? And where does the information kind of begin and end? Does Oshawa have guidance for where to go? Yeah, for sure. Well, we have checklists based on your project, But again, like it really just so much depends what exactly your

project is. But we in order to have your project certified, you're going to have to have not only like the output files, but also all of the files that someone would need to like actually produce that. So if you have a PCB, you know, like do you have like the KiCad files? Do you have, like, you know, not just the output, but, like, the actual tools that you need? The source. You have to open the source for it to be open source. And it's like for 3D printing, you were mentioning STL files, which you can re-import and kind of manipulate. But it's not as nice as if you had the original kind of project file. Yeah, exactly.

And that's hard, too, because, again, going back to software, there's a lot of open source software production tools. You know, compilers and everything, mostly people use open source stuff. Even IDEs are open source, a lot of them. But that's not true of a lot of physical making things, right? Yeah, Lee mentioned KiCad, KiCad. Right. And that's open source itself. Right, and that's a new-ish development in the history of PCB design,

even though it's not new. But yeah, but right, AutoCAD, Fusion 360, all these things for CAD are, and there's plenty of open source CAD things too, but there's just a huge family and they all have different formats. Yeah, and I think that's part of the discussion as well. You know, like people are going to have various stances on if you use like a proprietary software to produce your PCB, is it still open source? Can someone, you know, like if they actually can't access it without having access to this super expensive software, should that be considered open source? And I think it's a really, really complicated question.

Of course, I would love to say in a perfect world, everything would be able to be producible with only free software and only open source software. But there are obvious challenges to that. I get frustrated with the all-open-all-the-time stance because that's not possible yet. And that means you're discouraging people who might be able to go part of the way. Yeah, exactly. I'm right there with you. You know, like you have to create like a big tent and invite people in. And some of the problems with and barriers to creating open source work in general are like,% viable, but we have to find ways to help people get there and help people create those businesses and, you know, really meet people where they are at. If they're excited about the idea, you know, that's great. Some of the stuff is like, we got to work together and just, you know, getting on people's case for using maybe the software they were taught in school or the software they have access to because of their job. You know, like, it's definitely a step and we're all in it together.

So back to the hardware summit and specifically because I do a lot of origami, making paper. Tell me about this. Tell me all about this. Right. I mean, I'm not really sure what exactly, where exactly to begin, but we actually have two workshops about paper-oriented things this year. So one of them is making like an open source philosophy to making paper that just involves using like the free materials around you and like reimagining what it's like to make paper in our world and also building your own tools to make paper. Our facilitator 3D prints a bunch of different paper making tools and tells people how they can create their own. And then we have another one that's actually about origami and it's about collaboratively creating an interactive instrument that everyone is going to get to play together through building an origami sculpture. So I'm

not fully sure what that's going to be like, but I am very excited to see it. These are workshops. Are they going to be on video? Can I participate or just watch? Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to stream the workshops just because it's probably going to be extremely chaotic. In the best possible news, we have more people who want to be present in the workshop

than we are able to have physically do the workshop. So we're not really going to be able to mic people. Everyone's going to be running around. But we will have documentation available so that people can, on their own, do the workshop. But unfortunately, we won't be able to stream them live. I'm shaking my tiny fist. My inability to get to Montreal by Saturday. And how did you get involved with Oshawa? What drew you to the organization? Yeah, I've been working in creative spaces for quite a while. Um, so like DIY spaces and community oriented spaces and just generally using technology as like a way to, um, connect with people and a way to have common interests

and a way to like learn. So I have a nonprofit called little data and we do a bunch of weird tech events usually that overlap with art uh you know so basically trying to like bring people together who are maybe doing more technical work with people who are doing creative work um again like bringing people in who are just like curious so we did like festivals and artworks and that kind of stuff and then I started to be involved with makerspaces in Toronto. So I was a director at a makerspace in Toronto, Site 3 Collaboratory, for a number of years where, again, more of the same, just like helping people come together and build things and learn things and just like get excited about technology. And then I was just kind of looking for another way to make a bigger

impact. And I really just love the philosophies behind open source hardware and kind of realized that that is what I had been doing, but not really calling it that. So I was really excited about sharing things. I used my Twitter and Instagram and all that to just share what I was doing, what I was making, and also my process as an artist. So I have a fine arts background. I'm not an engineer or a technical person in any way. So just sharing my learning process. And I realized basically what I was doing was open source hardware. So when I saw that they were looking for a summit chair, I was like, I feel like a combination of my love for community and hardware and just connecting people

could be really fun. And I started doing it in 2021. So I did one virtual conference and then the last year's in New York. And this will be the third open hardware summit that I'm chairing. And yeah, that brings us up to date. So artist background and Open Hardware has been in the past, again, this is me trying to visualize the organization, has been more engineering oriented. And you also have been an educator and a maker. Which of these groups should attend the summit? I mean, obviously all of them. All of these groups.

You know, like I think the more like cross-pollination there is and the more like exposure that all of these groups have to each other, the more we can realize what we all have to offer. Right. So I know a lot of HCI, human computer interaction folks in academia, for example, who really also walk this line. A lot of labs that exist in that space do have people with these hugely varying backgrounds, and they produce really interesting work. So, you know, that was some of my early inspiration is looking at some of these creative spaces, like the most well-known example probably being like the MIT Media Lab, right? But there are a ton of labs that are like this, that are producing work that is kind of like on the cusp of engineering and art. So I feel like there's also a lot to offer for all of these groups to come together. And just like chatting, and I know that there are collaborations that have come out of the summit, you know, like unexpected people meeting each other that otherwise would not have the summit, you know, like unexpected people meeting

each other that otherwise would not have the opportunity to realize that they're really excited about the same thing, maybe even from a totally different perspective. It's on a weekend, though, which means, I mean, I've had this mental switch that if it's on a weekday, then it's a professional conference. If it's on a weekend, it's a maker conference. Well, it is a Friday and a Saturday. So we got, we got both. Um, but you know, I, a lot of people in these communities who really, really care in like a deep way, the, the boundaries are really, really blurry and they're super blurry for me too, right? Like, I don't know where my professional and personal and artistic interests begin and end with this stuff. I think I'm just generally excited and it like bleeds into every aspect of the things I'm

doing. I will say that I'm excited to see Oshawa working more with the academic community. If they have the tools to make things reproducible, if they know the steps, a lot of times they have the impetus to do it. And the, I don't want to say funding, let's go with grad students, to make it happen. And it's an area where there is a lot of research and a lot of interesting things can happen there. But so many times there are academic papers and you can't reproduce them because you can't get to the code. And it's not because the lead investigator doesn't want you to have the code. It's just there's no good way to put it together. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I have spent a lot of time being the oddball

in academic circles, like pushing against these boundaries. And it's so hard. But we, Oshawa just recently ran a program, Open Hardware Creators in Academia, that's kind of like meant to address some of these issues. So we gave grants to, I want to say 10 fellows to do kind of meta work on creating open source hardware in academia. So creating guides to like how you can like teach these things to your students, how you can present it to the administration and just general resources for navigating this. Because, you know, there are structures in place that really, really prevent it. And that's part of our work as a community to try to overcome those things. I mean, one question there, too, is going back to, you know, using what tools you had in college. The companies have an interest in getting people hooked on SolidWorks or whatever, right?

Oh, yeah, for sure. So those are the tools you encounter in academia because those are the professional tools, and they're preparing you for professional work, but also the companies, you know, give the academics, the academia organizations a deal so that this is kind of self-perpetuating so breaking that with like hey maybe try uh these open source alternatives seems like it would be useful at least at least to the stage of i'll be where these exist and maybe do a project with these to see that they they can do similar things i don't know it does seem like people come out of you know engineering school with well here are the three tools and I have to use them and they cost $6,000 a seat.

For sure. And then not everyone has the time or ability to be able to take, after completing your four-year degree, to take another three months to learn the now free version of the software, you know? So yeah, definitely. And, you know, a lot of companies have been able to really balance like their own benefits of the open source community with also their own, like you say, investment in having students have this super expensive software. They're able to pick and choose what parts of our community that benefit them. And part of the goal is really just to like find ways to develop our own like robust and awesome free software that can stand up to those limitations, right? Some of it's just being able to talk to them realistically about where the tools are. I mean, I learned MATLAB in school and I used it professionally. And now if I reach for something, it is always NumPy.

And I couldn't tell you if I can tell you that NumPy of today exceeds MATLAB of the 90s. Which is a bold statement. Yes, exactly. But I couldn't tell you if NumPy of today is a competitor to actual MATLAB. And knowing as an academic, if I could know that, it would help me to be able to say, I am preparing my students by having them

use NumPy. KiCad, again, is one of those that for a long time, people were using it and it was good, but everybody knew it wasn't as good. And it's starting to get, you know... It takes time, yeah. It's starting to get to the point where, yes, you can come out of school only having used key CAD and still be hired. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, some of those things, too, is like there are a lot of I'm thinking specifically about like, you know, PCB making softwares that are just as confusing. Oh, yeah. You know, they're all they're all just as confusing. But like, you know, it's sometimes just easier to go with the thing that you know and that's what you have to do, right? So just having, like, people have the resources and, like, the capacity to say, like, like, like you mentioned, you know, like this will, this is a usable real tool and there are undeniable benefits of using open source

tools. I mean, one of the undeniable real benefits is that you can use it after college. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how many times I scrounged around for a MATLAB license. I know. Yeah, no. Yeah. And the company always like had one, but we always needed like three. So it was very exciting.

Okay. So that is the summit and some about open source hardware. Let's talk about you. Yeah, sure. You have been researching outer space infrastructure. That so cool tell me more yeah so um my phd research is about uh is about outer space so it's basically wait wait say that again your phd research is is about outer space i love the canadian, come on. She's been researching otters in space. Sorry, I should not tease you. That would be a great topic. Okay, I'm sorry.

Outer space. Go ahead. Yeah. Basically, just like doing kind of like a historical dive onto how the first um you know people were entering into outer space and how we're looking towards the future now so um you know if if we are to have general population in space what does that look like uh and, how can we take these like very militarized technologies and kind of adapt them for people, for regular people who might not have any of this super training, who might like really not want to eat this like dried up gross food, who might want to have like

a life that is not super efficient and you know timed down to the minute like what does that kind of look like um given the history i thought you didn't like space stations well that's the problem i don't i don't think that they they do a very good job of like painting an idea of a future that feels like I want to be there. I it's okay. So I, I've never even, you know, I've read a lot of sci-fi and stuff and I've never considered the conceit is always that space is hard. And then you have to just accept that, you know, you're going to have to be one of these tough people who can eat coffee from a

bag or whatever and rock. So considering the opposite of that, it's very rare that it's written about that, hey, let's have a, except in the far future stuff, right, where everything's already super advanced and people can basically live like they do on a planet in space. So that's fascinating. And I don't think a lot of people are thinking about that.

Yeah, and for me, it's a lot about like create like from the beginning, creating spaces that acknowledge people's humanity, right? You know, that like acknowledge that it's like totally okay to want to chill out in your space station. It's totally okay to want to do leisure activities in your space station. If we're expecting people to do things like go to Mars or to live in, you know, like space settlements or to spend any extended period of time in space, we have to be human about it. And that could mean a lot of things, right? That could mean, yeah, everything from like leisure time to like to fitness to like even just like considering what kinds of people we want to have in our space stations. Right. Like how do we accommodate somebody who is getting older in space or how do we accommodate someone with varying abilities in space? These are all kind of questions that even on Earth, they're kind of just like tacked on afterward. We're just like, okay, well, we'll just make it accessible, right? But if we think

from the beginning, how is life in space really going to work? I think we will generally have much better outcomes. How does knitting work in space? Knitting? I mean, knitting kind of depends on gravity, just a little bit. Never mind. Why? I don't know why knitting in space was where I went first. But what I really was thinking about. Well, it's a great leisure activity. Gardening.

Gardening. I mean, garden, if your hydroponics are beyond just food, then that's where I would spend all of my time, as long as it didn't smell bad, which I guess if it smelled bad, then it's probably not healthy and bad and the food should not be eaten. But where am I going with this? I don't know. Well, I know, but I'm with you. I'm with you going this random place, because how do we like assign value to these things that like on on some type of paper have no have no value like growing flowers growing plants just because of the joy of growing plants right and that things that create a quality of life um that we want to have how do we account for those things in this like, yeah, like harsh

environment of space that, that's been like really heavily optimized in a very particular way. Are there things beyond simply bringing, and I know what makes us human is, you know, mostly our experience on this planet, which has a lot of things associated with it and moving to space is not, none of those things are available unless we bring them with us. Are there things you've been thinking about that are unique to space that are like, oh, these are new human experiences that are not just grinding out life? I mean, there's weightlessness. Right, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, one thing that has come up a lot in my research is uh how people of like a whole bunch of varying

abilities so various kinds of disabled people might really excel in this environment of outer space whereas on earth you know like it's generally thought of that that they aren't able to contribute on on the same level, which is not true at all. But, you know, like maybe this is an opportunity that we can use to like think about like, hey, like for people who don't have, you know, who have different use of their limbs, maybe they don't have to like run on some weird gravity simulation machine for two hours a day. And that's pretty cool. You know, for people who can't see, like maybe we don't have to illuminate every aspect of the space station and that's like a huge benefit. You're saving a bunch of energy. So there's all

kinds of like other opportunities that allow us to reimagine the way we're thinking of like bodies in space, basically. And so what is your day to day? What is your, I mean, thinking about this is neat, but it would take me about two days before I was starting to write a sci-fi novel. Yeah. I mean, my, my research mostly involves, um, looking it's very, the, the, the crux of it, like every PhD research is very boring, looking at historical documents and like understanding how we are building spaces and selecting people for outer space and what assumptions are kind of built into that. So thinking about how we can kind of like adapt those things to be different and to be, to just, like, really imagine, like, a different world outside of our world. Once again, two days and I'm writing a sci-fi novel.

You never like doing research. I like doing some research. I just get into the research and then I'm like, oh, and then I can apply this this way. And then suddenly I'm off on tangents. Well, I've been told by my advisor more than once to stop making art and start doing the research. And it's actually been something that I was really struggling with because I come from a fine arts background and I just got really excited about this subject. And at the beginning of my PhD research, I kept trying to make art pieces and I kept trying to, you know, write stories and do all these things. And it helped me think about it, for sure. But at one point, I had to just start reading the archives. archives do you find that there's um a psychological desire from some people to say no you can't do it this way it has to be like you know the the pioneers and the people on the frontier and the miners in the in the california gold rush and everything must be suffering. I mean, is there that attitude that is persistent among some aspects of the space? I don't know what the space thought leaders, that's a terrible word, but.

Like hardship is necessary to discovery? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it has to do with like what our idea of efficiency is and what our idea of values are. Right. So if our goal, like, you know, you mentioned like the gold rush and all of these things. Right. If our goal is to get to space to extract minerals in space, that's a different goal than to like get space because we want to like have a cool space garden and knit things. Yeah. I mean, if the goal is to simply make a profit, that's entirely different from, okay, we're just expanding the frontier of where people live. Exactly. And I think those things are often obfuscated a little bit or difficult to really see at face value because it's so easy to be excited about space. Like I'm so excited about space all the time, right? So sometimes you have to dig a little bit

to really see like, okay, why are we going? And what do we hope to accomplish? And how can we like keep those goals in mind and not get sidetracked by mining the moon or whatever? You've said you've done some research and I can imagine there is a lot of nasa documentation but do you also read sci-fi because i'm thinking about bujold's uh quadi system oh people adapted to space people adapted to space i don't read as much sci-fi as i should unfortunately i i am definitely like aware that

a lot of these topics are covered by sci-fi authors in a bunch of different ways especially you know like trying to imagine other worlds there's a ton of like you know activists or um you know people with like trying to understand how their identities manifest in space. And I do a lot more looking at art. So, I do have a chapter of my dissertation that's just about different ways people draw space or paint space or render space and what that means, right? Like, how do we imagine a space station? And is it an extension of, you know, the ISS? Or is it like a whole other world

that maybe has other values or other ideas or other priorities? It's probably a really unique perspective to come into this without a big sci-fi background because you're not going to be... People are constantly giving me recommendations right but it's also great right because you're not you're not tainted by a bunch of people's other preconceptions or or story-based kind of ideas and things i think that's actually probably

useful for your research because i am so tainted once you're done once you're done i've got a list of books for you but oh yeah yeah yeah when I'm done reading all the documentation, I'll go back and watch all these things. I was watching For All Mankind, and I couldn't stop referencing the actual historical events that everything was based off that I feel like most people who are watching the show probably don't pick up on like every little thing. But because I've done so much research into outer space, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is like an offshoot of that document. This is an offshoot of this meeting, you know. So that was really, really, really cool to have that perspective while watching for all mankind. But in terms of sci-fi, I definitely, as soon as I've done my dissertation, I'm just going to like sit down and like get caught up on the last like 50 years. It is too. I mean, because some of the older stuff is

weird and future and yet closer than it was then. And yeah, sorry, Chris and I are both reading Werner Finch and it's just weird. So weird. Okay, so another thing you work on are zines, which are like magazines, but without... I don't know where I'm going with this. Don't say that. No, that didn't work at all. Tell me about your zines. Let's just go with that one.

Yeah, I mean, I just love zine culture. So for, who doesn't know zine? I don't understand zine culture. It's been around a really long time. So it's time for you to. I know, but I don't get it. They're little self-published magazines. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's just a cool way to share stuff you're excited about. Imagine the internet didn't exist. Yeah. It's a web page that you hand someone. Okay. Okay, sorry. That's a great way to explain it. It's like your GeoCities page.

You can make it about whatever you want, and you can make it with whatever kind of weird graphics you want. But it really comes out of photocopy culture. When photocopy machines became accessible and popular, and the tools that people had were to photocopy stuff and to mail it out to their friends and um you know yeah again like a lot of the internet just I don't want to say stop that but changed it you know so now I could post on Instagram and make a reel it's kind of like making a zine. It's something I'm excited about. I want to share with people. But I started doing it because I, again, I have an education that is like fine arts and I learned electronics through mostly experimentation or

a series of like super weird art teachers who also didn't really know but they were like I don't know I just kind of do it this way and it works um so I felt at one point like I was missing a lot of information that I felt like everyone around me kind of already knew so the example I like to give was like I remember the first time I like stripped a wire and it was like a strand core wire this is like a million years ago it was a strand core wire. This is like a million years ago. It was a strand core and I'd never seen that before. I'd only ever seen like solid core breadboard wires. And I was like, what is going on? I was like so confused. And I felt like everyone around me already knew this. They were like, look, this is different kinds of wire in

your wire. And there was like a ton of things like that you know like little things where i was like oh like why doesn't this led work and this one does like what's the deal with this button i press it once this one i have to hold it down like all those little things that like sometimes people don't sit you down and tell you so i started making a series of three scenes at first one is an instructive appreciation of buttons and switches. One is all about wire. And the other is LED love. And these are three topics that I feel like people just kind of zoom past when you're learning. And it just goes into detail about like all of the little things that you might not know, maybe things that no one told you.

That's a good idea. You have a new one coming out. Yeah. So a topic that I feel like has kind of plagued artists, I would say, for the longest time is Ohm's Law. So very simple on the surface. I feel like people tell you they're like, okay, you know, like, here's like the three little equations, you multiply, divide, whatever. divide whatever um but then in application i have seen a lot of people be very confused especially when circuits start to get more advanced or you know like trying to get past that basic level and i was trying to figure out whether it was like that i was missing some core facts when i was learning or whether i understood more than i thought i did and nothing was actually confusing at all uh or you know whether there was like more to it. So I wrote the scene and it basically just covers like how electricity works and how to use Ohm's law in like a way that you're actually going to be using it if you're like building simple circuits.

And like to really like explain the relationship between like voltage, current and resistance. So it really takes people step by step and just like explains those three forces, which again, like I know it's like pretty level one stuff. But I think I see a lot of people at very different levels of electronics misunderstand or get it wrong. So, yeah, I'm super excited about it because it's a topic that like always low key made me feel like I didn't belong because it was like a level one thing that I felt like I didn't have 100% grasp on. Even though I felt like I understood every phase, I was like, somehow this doesn't add up to me.

That happens to me a lot. Yes, I understand all this. I can solve, somehow this doesn't add up to me. That happens to me a lot. Yes, I understand all this. I can solve the problems, but I don't understand it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's called OMNO. Yeah, I'm excited. Did it turn out that you do mostly understand it? Yeah, it turns out that i definitely understand and the thing that um that i feel like was

most confusing is that people have these like kind of canned ways of explaining ombre they just repeat them and then the resistance is it sponge yeah yeah how in the world no no it's a pipe it's constricted it's a pipe yeah oh is it the inductor that's the sponge something's a sponge that just never mind i think the water water analogy breaks down with either inductors or no it's the capacitor is a sponge no well i feel like the water is like a really a really funny one because it's like thinking about water in the way that you're prompted to when you're being explained like,

oh, the height of the pipe or like the... I'm like, I've never thought about water like this. Why are you explaining it to me like this? Thanks a lot. Take me back and explain water first. Yeah. Does it say plumber on my shirt? Because it shouldn't.

Yeah, I got a D in the course that tried to teach me about water as electronics. And then he had to go back and get a whole degree about it. No, that was STEM. Oh, oh. I didn't go back and get that degree. Although I did take graduate STEM after that, but that was different. Yes, Ohm's Law vexes me forever, even though it's very simple.

Once you try to apply it everybody explains it just random ways so i'm gonna read that maybe it'll fix me yeah i tried to as i was writing it i tried to like just basically go through every like canned phrase that people say and just try to really understand what they mean by it it and break them all down and say it in a different way. So every, in the whole zine, it's about 20 pages with a lot of big, a lot of big pictures. You know, like it really just tries to like take you from like, what exactly is happening? What do these forces really mean? And like, what are the next steps that build on top of each other without using any of these like, you know, prefab explanations?

I know the answer is going to be no, but it is a book I like a lot. Have you read Electronics for Earthlings? No, but that sounds great. It has a similar goal in that it definitely does not use the water analogy. And it was very helpful to me when I was in the position of, oh, yeah, I can solve these equations, but I can't apply it to this circuit. I will definitely check that out. That sounds great. Where do we get your zine?

How do we get your zine? How do we get your zine? Yeah, you can get my zines on my website, which is leesibe.org. That's Lima, Echo, Echo, Charlie, Yankee, and Bravo.org. I always got to show that off. I know. Do you know how hard I spent? Look, I probably can do some of it in Morse. Let's see. No, no, no, no. We're not doing that now. Ali, it's been really good to talk to you.

Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? I mean, thank you so much. I really love to cover this huge array of topics. We went everywhere from open source to outer space to zines. So yeah, this has been great. Our guest has been Lee Wilkins, a cyborg artist and educator

currently based in Montreal. They are the summit chair and board member of the Open Source Hardware Association. Thanks, Lee. Thank you. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you.