We-Think by Charles Leadbeater

Author:Charles Leadbeater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2010-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Neil Gershenfeld, a visionary scientist at the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, has developed something very similar, an integrated manufacturing centre called a Fab Lab. Each lab is a suite of industrial fabrication tools, including laser cutters, that make three-dimensional objects, as well as machines that make antennas, circuits and other precision parts. Larry Sass, an MIT architecture professor, has adapted the Fab Lab to make a plywood house for about $2,000. Gershenfeld predicts the lab’s costs will fall from $25,000 in 2007 to below $10,000 within a decade. In Ghana a Fab Lab is making mobile refrigerators, and in India another is producing gears to bring ageing copying machines back to life. Gershenfeld argues Fab Labs will allow people to make a much wider variety of products tailored to their local needs – niche manufacturing – and so sustain local innovation and entrepreneurship. Fab Labs could democratise how we make products, just as computers are democratising how we access information. Fabricators may migrate into our homes just as computers and printers have. If Gershenfeld is right, eventually we may be able to manipulate, redesign and make objects in the way we edit and redesign PowerPoint presentations.

The idea of swarms of rapid replicating machines, making products using a treasure trove of open-source designs, sounds far-fetched. Yet each of these developments is an extension of an already established trend. Close-knit communities of engineers have shared designs for centuries; the web makes this sharing much easier on a much larger scale. The spread of software and computing into a much wider range of products means that hackers will have a much wider range of objects to tinker with, adapt and improve. More companies may find themselves in a position similar to Lego’s when a user community of almost 900 developers formed around its reprogrammable Lego Mindstorms robots within weeks of the launch. Bowyer and Gershenfeld may sound mad, predicting a world of near limitless manufacturing capacity in which all matter could be reprogrammed to make virtually anything. But in one sense they are simply proposing an addition to the capital stock of any average middle-class household that already owns a Black and Decker drill and workbench.

Yet even if distributed manufacturing is technically possible, it is doubtful it will make economic sense for many consumers. It seems unlikely that networks of rapid replicator machines will replace large factories, chemical plants and production lines. Too much investment and learning has been sunk into the industrial infrastructure of the developed world to make it vulnerable to that kind of upheaval. In the rich world Gershenfeld and Bowyer’s machines will be mainly used by DIY fanatics and craft businesses. It is unlikely many consumers will turn away from high quality branded goods made by Sony, Nokia, Toshiba or BMW in favour of a bit of DIY that may or may not work.

However in the developing world, where most manufacturing will be done in future, these ideas could have a dramatic impact. Western consumers may

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