WIRED's Chris Anderson discusses the Makers Revolution
Desktop manufacturing changes world
We're now entering the third industrial revolution, Anderson said. The first one, which began with the spinning jenny in 1776, doubled the human life span and set population soaring. From the demographic perspective, "it's as if nothing happened before the Industrial Revolution."
The next revolution was digital. Formerly industrial processes like printing were democratized with desktop publishing. The "cognitive surplus" of formerly passive consumers was released into an endless variety of personal creativity. Then distribution was democratized by the Web, which is "scale agnostic and credentials agnostic." Anyone can potentially reach 7 billion people.
The third revolution is digital manufacturing, which combines the gains of the first two revolutions. Factory robots, which anyone can hire, have become general purpose and extremely fast. They allow "lights-out manufacturing," that goes all night and all weekend.
"This will reverse the arrow of globalization," Anderson said. "The centuries of quest for cheaper labor is over. Labor arbitrage no longer drives trade." The advantages of speed and flexibility give the advantage to "locavore" manufacturing because "Closer is faster." Innovation is released from the dead weight of large-batch commitments. Designers now can sit next to the robots building their designs and make adjustments in real time.
Thus the Makers Movement. Since 2006, Maker Faires, Hackerspaces, and TechShops (equipped with laser cutters, 3D printers, and CAD design software) have proliferated in the US and around the world. Anderson said he got chills when, with the free CAD program Autodesk 123D, he finished designing an object and moused up to click the button that used to say "Print." This one said "Make." A 3D printer commenced building his design.
Playing with Minecraft, "kids are becoming fluent in polygons." With programs like 123D Catch you can take a series of photos with your iPhone of any object, and the software will create a computer model of it. "There is no copyright on physical stuff," Anderson pointed out. The slogan that liberated music was "Rip. Mix. Burn." The new slogan is "Rip. Mod. Make."
I asked Anderson, "But isn't this Makers thing kind of trivial, just trailing-edge innovation?" "That's why it's so powerful," Anderson said. "Remember how trivial the first personal computers seemed?"
Bio
Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson has served as editor in chief of WIRED since 2001. Under his leadership, the magazine has garnered nine National Magazine Awards and 19 additional nominations and has won the prestigious top prize for General Excellence three times. In 2010, AdWeek named WIRED the Magazine of the Decade. Anderson is the author of two New York Times best sellers, The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price, both of which are based on influential articles published in WIRED. He is also a cofounder of 3D Robotics, an open source robotics company. Before joining WIRED, he was a business and technology editor at The Economist. He began his media career at the two premier science journals, Nature and Science. In 2007, Anderson was named to the Time 100, the news magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential people.