The subject is digital fabrication.

Here is Neil Gershenfield – MIT Center of Bits and Atoms, Founder of FAB LABS – speaking about FAB LABS to a group of 1000 in Monterrey, California. He speaks about the digital revolution and the new twist – which is to move from two dimensions into three dimensions:

The FAB LAB Talk

He argues that the revolution underway is a revolution akin to mini-computer’s role – they were the bridge between tops-down thinking a la mainframes and bottoms-up thinking represented by personal computers.

The Essence
He was talking about the role of integrating “bits” and “atoms”.

The canon of computer science – prematurely froze the model of compassion, based on what was available in the fifties.

“We still look at fabrication as top down. A revolution is underway that will break organizational boundaries, just as happened with computers, when mainframes gave way to mini-computers, which in turn gave way to personal computers.

My (random) notes:
“Personal fabrication helps make you unique”

These FAB LABS are the cost and complexity of the

“we are now in this mini-computer era of fabrication”

“There is a fabrication divide.”

“a micro-VC fund”

Empowerment: “I can do it!”

$20,000 in equipment
– focused nano-beam writers
– etc
–
–

Kelly – my “scream body” – a portable container for holding a scream.

“you can’t segregate digital fabrication”

“how to make almost anything”

The Internet of Devices

Fungible computers – prototype that make small chips and pour them out by the square inch. “Computing as a raw material”

Chemistry as bubbles.

“We all know we have had a digital revolution but what is that? Shannon took us (in the forties) from a phone as a wire that degraded with distance…he proved that if you add information and remove it to a signal, you can compute perfectly with an imperfect device.

Self-Replicating Templating

Laser Micro-Printers

Internet Zero – web server costs $1
(the way it encodes the internet – let’s devices inter-network)

Computers that are tools.

digital communication

analog fabrication

digital fabrication