Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

This is a good book on an interesting topic. I run cabinet shop in Toronto and have been prattling to my wife about the remaking of the industrial revolution for a few years now. Anderson sums up many of these themes with lots of interesting stories in an easily readable style. I think there are a few things worth adding. First while digital fabrication technology is amazing it is only as useful as the people using it. A cnc router won't make you a good cabinet maker any more that a word processor will make you a good writer or a digital synthesizer will make you a good musician. A synthesizer enables a good musician to become a whole orchestra almost instantly. But a bad musician still sounds like a bad musician and a bad writer is just as annoying as ever to read. What these technologies do is allow the talented craftsman, musician, writer to be more productive than ever, and also lower the barriers to entry for the people with talent who are not part of the established social hierarchy. In my own shop I don't have my own cnc equipment. When I take on a project like a kitchen, I simply email lists of parts (doors, drawers, carvings) to fabricators not far from my shop and in some cases the parts come back to me the next morning. My suppliers don't stock inventory, they fabricate the parts digitally and so they can produce whatever I want in whatever sizes I want. This is the easy part of my job. The hard part getting the clients to decide on what they want, and figuring out how to fit everything they want into the space they have on their budget. To use a car analogy most clients want something like a "Hummer/Lamborghini/Porsche/Lexus/Rolls" for the price of a Focus. They often send me 3d cad drawings of their dream kitchen. It is nearly always like those famous drawings by Escher. At first glance they seem very geometrically precise, but they can't exist in 3 dimensional reality. Squaring this circle is always a challenge, and demands a combining the skills of an expert cabinet maker with those of a psychotherapist. The second hard part of my job is fitting cabinets which are always made to be regular shapes into old real houses which are never square or level. Accomplishing this task demands the skills of an expert finish carpenter, tricks that I learned from my grandfather. In short to be a cabinet maker in the digital age you still need all the skills of a traditional cabinet maker. However what digital technology and advances in new technology in general mean is that small shops can now compete with large factories in a way they couldn't 30 years ago. I can now offer my clients anything that large factory kitchen manufacturers could in the past. For example, 30 years ago complex cabinet door styles could only be made custom at great expense using traditional cabinet shop tools or economically in large batches at big factories. Now I can order 1 door if I need it economically. And, I can beat mass production companies hands down in terms of service and speed. In many cases I can also compete with mass producers on cost. This is because I have lower transaction costs. One of the things that frightens small scale producers is the fact that labour costs of small scale production can't compete with mass production particularly if the goods can be produced in places like China. People say "They make that thing in China for $5, how can I compete". However, if the small scale producer sells locally they don't have to compete with the $5 labour cost in China; they only have to compete with the $50 or $100 retail cost in their local market. The goods that are produced in China have a long list of transaction costs associated with them: transportation, wholesaling, retailing, packaging, inventory, obsolescence, corporate expenses and profit, mass market advertising and promotion. All these costs mean that the widget that is produced for $ 5 needs to sell for $ 50 or $ 100 to make a profit. This leaves lots of room for local artisans to make a living, as long as they keep their transaction costs down. Anderson points out the digital crowd is rediscovering actual reality. I think he does not go far enough in this. People like actual reality. One of the things little noted in the frenzy of the digital revolution is the success of the Home Depot retail model. 30 years ago building materials was a virtual business. Materials were stored in warehouses to which customers both commercial and retail had no access. Most businesses would simply phone the supplier, say what they wanted and give an account number or use a visa and it would be delivered, much like ordering things online but over the phone. Even if you went to a lumber yard, you would usually go to a desk and order things and they would be brought out to you. Home Depot changed all this by putting everything on open shelves so people could go in a play with it. The builders supply became playground for handy people. At the height of the virtual revolution, Home Depot took over the market for home building supplies by `going actual'. I find this in my own business. While the web is a good way to get my name out, showing people real physical samples is the best way to close a sale. After a visit I always make sure I leave a potential customer with a few samples to play with. This way my brand sits on the kitchen table while they are trying to come to a decision. All this points to the possibility of a business model that Anderson hints at, but does not really explore; the return of the traditional neighborhood artisan. A few hundred years ago if you wanted a pair of shoes, or a coat or a piece of furniture you went to a shoemaker, or a tailor or a cabinet maker and told them what you wanted and they made it for you. There was personal contact between the producer and the consumer, you could touch and feel the materials and say what you liked. People could take pride in their work and see the smiles on the faces of happy customers. This was a world wiped out by mass production. Huge production runs meant the artisan could not compete with mass produced goods. But mass production brought its own costs. The producer and the consumer became separated by a huge faceless corporate distribution system, which pretended to care, but most suspected really didn't. This was partially documented by Marx as worker alienation. The flipside, consumer alienation, is perhaps best documented by Monty Python. Mass production also brings with it a whole host of transaction costs, noted above, which make it not as cheap as it might at first appear. New production technology offers the possibility of changing all this. When I go to a shoe store it is always a frustrating experience. I always want some combination of style and size that they never seem to have in the back. Imagine however if a shoe store had say 50 or 100 basic shoes that you could try on for size and fit, as well as some other samples that you could use to pick the styles. With the help of an expert shoemaker you could try on the fitting samples until you found something comfortable. Then you could use the style samples to mix and match all the colour and style details that fit your taste. This shoe store would not have a big warehouse of boxes in the back but some rolls of material as well as some cnc cutting and printing machines and specialized assembly tools. Depending on the complexity of the order you could go and have a coffee and then come back and pick up your order, or maybe come back the next day. This shoe store would give you exactly what you want as well as have some real cost benefits. There would be no packaging cost, low inventory costs, and much lower transportation costs. (Compressed rolls of material are much cheaper to transport and store than packaged finished good). Many of these cost reductions would also be environmental benefits, such as less packaging and transport. And worker and consumer alienation would be a thing of the past. This is how I run my cabinet shop and I think it has great potential. Sign shops already work on this model. Perhaps the mall of the future could look like the high street of old, with shoemakers, tailors and furniture makers crafting what you want when you want them. The digital world provides the infrastructure and the tools, but the purchasing process would be actual and face to face. The best of both worlds maybe? (I also wrote a doctoral dissertation at Oxford which was in large part about the relationship of the world of things to the world of symbols, so I have also been interested in these problems from a philosophical perspective. My examiners, postmodernists who don't believe in outdated concepts like `reality', didn't take kindly to it.)

I love the main idea of the book: that 3D printers, 3D scanners and CNC machines are becoming available to everyone and will change the world. I'm an engineer who builds factory automation, and have most of the tools the author mentions. The author compares 3D printers now with the dot matrix printer of 20 years ago. He believes that in the next 20 years 3D printers will make similar progress that laser and inkjet printers made, and the result will be an Industrial Revolution to rival anything that came before. Motley Fool had a similar article recently and went so far as to say this kind of technology would shift manufacturing from China back to the US. Honestly, the Chinese must be laughing in their boots. Maybe it's just my lack of imagination, but when I look around Walmart, I don't see much of anything that looks like it could be made on a 3D printer. Could we 3D print an alarm clock, a can of spray deodorant, coffee cup, ballpoint pen, jeans, dogfood? They can all be mass produced cheaply enough, and really people don't want to put a lot of thought into making all the various and sundry items in their life. The author gives an example of people making custom decals for their phones and says people will pay a premium for unique items they help create. That's true of course, and I would love to find and enter a suitable market for a side business such as this for myself. I know the opportunities are out there, and I want a piece of that. But knowing first hand the difference between what a plastic injection mold machine can make in a day vs. a 3D printer, I don't see this changing the world in the way the author imagines in our lifetime. It was a fun read anyway, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

I feel that many reviewers will "review" the technologies referenced in this book, rather than the book itself. So I would like to first make a comment on the technology, then I will speak about the book. I am constantly less than satisfied with products that I buy because of poor build quality, unnecessary complexity, lacking functionality, or inability to personalize features; one simple example, for instance, might be TV remote controls - the battery cover gets lost, the buttons are hard to find in the dark and half the controller includes DVD functionality (Pause, Fast Forward, etc.) when all I am typically trying to do is turn on the TV and PS3 for some Netflix. I digress, but you can tell, this is a peeve of mine. When I read this book, it gives me hope that I might be able to deal with such common frustrations. The naysayers will trivialize these tools, lamenting that they fall short of nanotechnological matter compilers, but then, well, they are missing the point. No tool is best for all situations, but new tools should always be welcome. Before you let my above comment make you believe that I am just a materialistic American who expects New Things to solve my problems (I am, but I do it with self-awareness) I would also like to say that I also believe that these technologies will have a much more profound impact on developing nations and cultures. Designing ultra-low-cost products not just for but with and alongside the ultra-poor (<$1/day) will become more and more possible with these types of manufacturing technologies. I fully expect to see CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) and Maker Labs in use in Africa in the near future. Local design solutions and local manufacturing - a formative duo. On the book itself I appreciate that it is rather reasonably sized and not so full of repetitive content that I started skimming to get to the point; I finished the book in just a few days, and it was jam packed with information. His book is first and foremost a book about people and secondly about the technology. If you are interested in 3D Printing (the poster child of this movement), CNC robotics (Computer Numerical Control), 3D scanners, crowdsourcing, Arduino microcontrollers, and the culture of tinkering, this book will offer a clear and concise vision of that future. If you are already fully informed about all these technologies, this book will offer case studies in those who have already started to see success in this area, and some of the methods on how they did it. For all those out there who are struggling in our fledgeling economy, working dead-end jobs without even a cost of living raise, perhaps this book will incite you to take the situation into your own hands. Certainly there is opportunity here, and this book can help point you in many promising directions. Highly recommended.

Der Autor is früherer "Wired"-Chefredakteur und jetzt Inhaber des erfolgreichen Startups 3D Robotics, die DIY Drohnen entwickeln und verkaufen. Das sagt schon viel über den kreativen Autor, der mit dem Buch "The Long Tail" bekannt wurde. Chris Anderson argumentiert wie folgt: erst gab es teure, individuelle Produktion. Durch Dampfmaschinen und Dieselmotoren wurde die industrielle Massenproduktion unschlagbar. Der durch das Haber-Bosch-Verfahren billige Kunstdünger ermöglichte die Ernährung der Weltbevölkerung. Jetzt wird durch die Internet-Revolution wieder alles anders: zwar gibt es immer noch billige Massenprodukte, und die werden auch bleiben. Hinzugekommen sind jetzt jedoch hochwertige individualisierte Produkte für einen kleinen Markt von wenigen tausend Käufern, die über das Internet erstmals erreicht und organisiert werden können. Initiativen wie Kickstarter ermöglichen es Erfindern, ohne großes Kapital und ohne großes Risiko revolutionäre Produkte zu entwickeln und in Rekordzeit auf den Markt zu bringen. Mitunter ist Andersons Ansatz zu hemmungsloser optimistisch, die private Weltraumfahrt hat bislang noch nicht so richtig abgehoben. Und das Buch wurde geschrieben, bevor Edward Snowdens Enthüllungen neue Sichten auf das Internet brachten. Trotzdem ist das Buch großartig geschrieben und vermittelt ungewöhnliche Einsichten sowohl in technologische als auch ökonomische Fragen jenseits des konventionellen politischen Links-Rechts-Schemas. Lesenswert! Übrigens ist vor kurzem eine deutsche Übersetzung erschienen.

Cuenta Chris Anderson de como los makers han regresado a los garages a realizar inventos después de la era www.com y como han cambiado al mundo de 10 años para acá. En este libro Chris cuenta como conoció al mexicano Jordi Muñoz quien fuera responsable de la popularización de los drones en todo el mundo. Un libro obligado si quieres entrar en el mundo de los "hacedores", pues te cuenta sobre las herramientas y conocimientos básicos que debes tener.

Well, though the author talks about revolutionary industrialization... it revolves around 3D printers..

Chris Anderson is "THE" man with "THE" vision for the current Internetical Business environment. This book describe something that is HAPPENING right now that is affecting all of us... if you believe that the "new is not the returning to the normal old", then this is the book to read...

Very interesting