In this month's Wired, Bruce Sterling blue-skys an interesting future for desktop manufacturing and fabrication (The Dream Factory) bringing digital replication into the domain of everyday physical artifacts - fabjects as Sterling describes them...though that sounds more like a Carrie Bradshaw endorsement :)
With HP already launching CD writers that can directly label discs and printable HP iPod Tattoos, it's not a stretch to imagine a future where cheap desktop fabs coupled with broadband and mobile networks could give rise to an explosion in digital matter...is this how the transporters in Star Trek worked? I guess the aliens in Contact may have hoped that mankind had a desktop fab to build their Machine?
As the combination of broadband, inexpensive CD/DVD writers and cheap storage rewrote the rules for movie and music distribution, expect the Napsterization of objects - picture this:
Fabster.com, a P2P network of licensed and unlicensed fabjects - ushering in a new era of grassroots distribution and copyright violations that propel RIAA/MPAA headaches into the 3rd dimension.
HP DeskFab, a new range of 3D printer/scanners and desktop fabs...handily embedding programmable RFID tags into each 'printed' fabject.
Rip. Mix. Fab. open source fabjects, licensed under Creative Commons, breaking human manufacturing ingenuity and creativity beyond the 'Big Factory' ;)
I look forward to downloading Interflora flower fabjects, embedded with Valentine's Day iMixes and Digiscents that I can 'text' to my beloved's office DeskFab
[..]Bruce Sterling doing good work in manufacturing and fabrication[..]
Posted by: Cheap Computers | July 07, 2009 at 11:17 AM