Means of Production, Pt3
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005Long ago, I posted an article on the growing accessibility to means of production. Today I came across Bathsheba Grossman’s web site and was floored to find all kinds of sculptures and laser-etched crystals for sale. The laser-etched crystals are not a big surprise, but the metal-scintering method sculptures of neat mathematical surfaces really gave some synaptic recoil.
I took a tour of the Advanced Manufacturing Lab at RPI a few months ago, and I was very impressed with the range of techniques available for producing durable prototypes and short production run products. While the outputs are still not as durable as objects made through traditional manufacturing techniques, the set-up time and low cost (sometimes as low as $1 - $2 per cubic inch of material consumed) opens up the design process to far more iterations than what could be done earlier.
Now seeing that some folks are starting to use these techniques for direct-to-consumer products really has my head spinning with the possibilities. The matter compiler (from Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age) may be a long ways off, but there is new application space being opened daily with these techniques… time to explore!