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Retrieved-at: 2021-10-13 16:15:39.039872+00:00

This is the first volume of a two-volume set about building a better life for ourselves, our community, and the world.  Building is meant in both the literal sense of construction and production, and in the social sense of how people work together to reach our goals.  The core ideas behind our in our approach can be summarized as follows:Resources and energy are abundant on Earth and in space.With enough knowledge and tools they can be used to build a better life.With planning this can have minimal side effects and be sustainable.Cooperation makes it affordable.  Exponential self-improvement makes it scalable.Smart tools can do most of the work and make it easier.Systems are defined in engineering for purposes like understanding, analysis, design, and improvement.  They can include people, other entities, or both.  They have characteristics of interest, such as quality of life, size, emissions, and output rate.  Their change in a desired direction is considered an improvement.  Self-improvement is when the change comes from internal action of the system.  It has occurred throughout history in many ways, such the as evolution of life, or the development of civilization.  In the past these changes have often been unplanned rather than purposeful.This volume discusses self-improving systems generally, and a particular example called aSeed Factory.  This is a starter set of equipment specifically designed for growth and self-improvement. It does this by a recursive process, where the upgraded equipment is used for further upgrades.  This has the potential for exponential growth, where one starter set can become as large or as many as needed.  There are many uses for seed factories, and more generally for systems that are designed for self-improvement.  We present several examples in the later sections of this work.  The same ideas and further examples are discussed  in Volume II onSpace Systems, where the environment and locations are very different from Earth.