[Hplusroadmap] Home invention in The Economist

[Bryan Bishop]

Looks like the scene is posed for our open source automated 
manufacturing and fabrication system to be released ...

- Bryan

On Sunday 11 May 2008, "Fay Herman" <faybee2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Innovation
> Home invention
>
> May 1st 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
> From *The Economist* print edition
> An increasing number of tinkerers are building their own gadgets
>
> THE standard sort of science fair can be a little bit stuffy.
> Precocious youngsters with a taste for laboratory notebooks spend
> years building experiments to compete for college scholarships. But
> what happens if you open the doors to a wider audience and add a bit
> of fun?
> Make MagazineNow, if you plug this into that and ...
>
> Such an event might look like the Maker Faire, a two-day festival
> which opens in San Mateo, California, on May 3rd. Like its more
> serious counterparts, it is a gathering of geeks, but with the
> addition of do-it-yourself enthusiasts, back-yard scientists, garage
> tinkerers, artists and crafts people. This year their eclectic
> projects will include fire-breathing robots, wearable computers,
> self-replicating
> three-dimensional printers (whatever they are) and giant motorised
> cupcakes. And everyone will be encouraged to get their hands dirty
> building their own electric circuits, creating their own fashion
> goods and launching their own rockets.
>
> This is the third year for the Maker Faire. Last year, more than
> 40,000 people turned up and a further 20,000 attended a second event
> held for the first time that year in Austin, Texas.
>
> The idea of playing around with technology in such a way might appear
> quirky, even superfluous. But nowadays it often drives innovation,
> says Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, a publishing company
> whose *Make*and * Craft* magazines sponsor the event. Mr O'Reilly is
> something of a technology guru himself and is widely credited with
> coining the term Web 2.0 to capture the trend towards greater
> creativity, information sharing and collaboration among internet
> users.
>
> Naturally, this all goes down well in California, where Steve Jobs
> and Steve Wozniak began the personal-computer revolution in a garage,
> and Sergey Brin and Larry Page dreamed up Google's algorithms while
> in graduate school. But the idea is spreading. Mr O'Reilly points to
> several trends responsible for the rising popularity of
> do-it-yourself innovation. First, computers, sensors and other bits
> are cheaper than ever. This means high-tech gadgets soon become
> disposable. So they are often plundered to build new things. An
> obsolete digital camera can, for instance, be attached to a kite for
> aerial photography; or with few more things and the innards of a
> satellite-navigation system become a small unmanned aerial vehicle.
>
> The second trend is that the internet is enabling people from all
> over the world to share information about their projects. Websites
> like Instructables.com and wikiHow.com have become popular virtual
> meeting places for inventors and others. They embrace the idea that
> you should freely share technological ideas—an approach known as
> "open source". This began in computer software but is now going on
> with all sorts of technologies.
>
> Addie Wagenknecht's project is typical. At the fair she is showing a
> multi-touch table which works like a computer screen. The device has
> some of the same features as a table-top device called Surface which
> is produced by Microsoft. But whereas that costs some $10,000, Ms
> Wagenknecht's version can be built with only $500 of bits (including
> a kit that she sells). And it has the potential to do much more, she
> says. Since both the hardware and the software are open-source,
> anyone can change things to suit their purpose, which like most
> things at the fair is bound to encourage even more innovation.
>
> Back to top
> ^^<http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1128838
>5#top>
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