In 1908 Henry Ford began a 10 year journey to perfect the Assembly Line. In so doing he created the Mass Market for complex goods and the new reality that all of what we buy is made using vast processes backed by vast sums of capital. An idea that has spread beyond business to everything. Schools are ever bigger, so is healthcare, government, food production. All are geared toward a mass market and use immense centralized processes that demand ever more financial capital. All are geared to taking the skilled worker out of the process.
I will make the case today that all this is going to unwind. We have seen the early aspects of this in media. Where all the tools to both get, process and distribute ideas have broken free from their Henry Ford model. Where the capital has been stripped out of the equation. Where we can write for a market of 1 or millions. Where little old me in my pj's can have nearly 2 million folks drop by my stuff in 8 years.
We are seeing this happening in the Open Source software world. Where more folks in their pj's can create enormous platforms that work better than their Top Down alternatives for a fraction of the cost.
But what if this could happen in the "Real World"? What if we could reverse Highland Park? What if it were possible to equip us with the tools that would make it possible to have a market for 1 in things. Especially for complex things? What if it were possible to for us to return to the normal human definition of an Economy? Being the Management of a Household? For you may have forgotten that until the late 19th century, the Economy was just that - the aggregation of millions of households.
A fantasy you say. Well no. The 1908 version of Highland Park is here right now. It is called a Fab Lab. What is a Fab Lab? Well best you hear Neil Gershenfeld describe them at TED.
In essence a Fab Lab is a tool kit - like an early personal computer that has the power, like an early computer to empower a person or a community to have the ability to build things in the same way that the computer enables us to create media or software.
On their own they are great. But imagine a global network of Fab Labs? Imagine the Network Effect on all of us?
It's coming folks. Want to know more?
My friend Ton Zijlstra is a Fab Lab leader in the Netherlands - he offers up these resources if you wish to know more:
FabLab origin
FabLab is a concept by Neil Gershenfeld of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. A good source on the background of the FabLab concept is Neil's book 'Fab' , as well as this FAQ by MIT: (it among other things points to Neil's TED talk which I think is good to watch:
FabLab, impact and social aspects
FabLabs are all about empowerment. It does for production what web2.0/social media did for publishing and sharing: pushing the tools into the hands of individuals. FabLab does this by letting individuals work with all machines themselves, and giving access to everybody to do this. And providing that access for free.
It goes beyond that however (and this is something not yet clearly understood by MIT I think as they are looking more at the empowerment of the technology itself).
One additional key thing is that FabLab flips our attitude to abundance and scarcity. In general our economic system seems to treat material resources as abundant (oil, environment, etc.) and ideas and creativity as scarce (inventors / innovation are rare, all other people are just consumers). FabLab does the opposite: it treats ideas and personal creativity as abundant (anyone can have a go, and is encouraged to do so, anyone can make something that is valuable, if only to themselves), and materials as scarce (so you work with whatever materials are at hand locally in your FabLab's environment).
The second additional key things is that there is a network effect in play. Every new FabLab is not a competitor to the others but increases the value of the entire network of FabLabs. This is only true however if a FabLab is firmly rooted in local community, answers to local needs, and creates an ecosystem locally. The network effect then comes into play as all FabLabs, due to their local rooting, are slightly different, and form a network with very diverse nodes. They then enhance each other's capabilities. When the abundance of ideas is shared through that network, they lead to diverse versions of products adapted to local conditions and available materials.
To strengthen this network effect, community building across labs, and users of labs is important (and this is the role I try to take)
Other aspects
There is a FabAcademy, which are academic courses offered by different FabLabs in the network (e.g. MIT, Amsterdam, Norway, Iceland and Barcelona all contribute modules to FabAcademy. Students can take place in any lab. Paying students get academic credits)
There is the yearly FabLab conference, which is turning into the global community meet-up. It runs for a week, with one day for an academic conference on nano-tech/fablab related topics.
For a (growing and therefore incomplete) map of the FabLab network see this link
An impression of recent postings in English at FabLab.nl
An impression of activity from around the world:
A nice little video of different people describing what FabLab is to them:
There is a 24/7 video conferencing system in use, allowing FabLabs to literally have a window into other labs.
