Kenya: Spirit of Bushpunk

Someone's weekends and six months worth of research on the internet led to his own Spirit of St. Louis:



Afrigadget has links to other aviation bushpunks. The bushpunk aspect of this?  Internet enabling open source access, recycle and cannibalization definitely top the list. Whether the guy's plane flies or not, it's clear open source is at the foundation of bushpunk and the plane feels like a first step in Humblemanufacture advocate Dominic Muren's old thoughts about bushpunk:

Stop imagining these Bushpunk innovators as dark-skinned people in faraway deserts. Now imagine instead that they are perpetually unemployed people in Detroit or Philadelphia; Imagine they are old guard hippies who have given up fossil fuels in Seattle or San Fransisco; Imagine that they are self sufficient ranchers in Colorado, Idaho, or Iowa. Take away the bush, and you've still got a valid need. No matter where we are, we are realizing that we want (even need) the function of high technology, but cannot afford to pay the costs, particularly in terms of fossil fuel use, or excessive energy consumption of any kind. We need the root-hair technologies, accessible on a local or regional level, that can afford us these functions. This is what Humblefacture aims to do for manufacturing: Not to send us back to hand craft for the sake of increasing labor, but to empower more people to seize the reins of their situation, whether they are at the top of the pyramid, or the bottom. The humble in Humblefacture makes it malleable: it is the "punk" waiting to be defined as Bush, Bio, Steam, or Cyber by the situation and people who adopt it.

Apart from open access, the internet further empowers future bushpunks who will help innovate the way through that chasm between the needs of hi tech gadgets and a low-fi world by helping connect innovators and factories in the new scaled down landscape of manufacture: