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1. rediscovering the world of things
   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.)

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2. Loved the book, even if I don’t completely believe 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.

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3. The most important book I’ve read this year
   This is the most important book you will read this year. Let me repeat that, this is the most important book that you will read this year and here’s why, it outlines just how through innovation and new product development the world is about the change. It’s pretty common knowledge that innovation especially in this country is the key to our recovery and automation is the key to new product introductions.
   From the book:
   “Automation is here to stay-it’s the only way that large-scale manufacturing can work in rich countries. But what can change is the role of smaller companies. Just as start-ups are the driver of innovation in the technology world and the underground is the driver of ne culture, so, too, can the energy and creativity of entrepreneurs and individual innovators reinvent manufacturing and create jobs along the way…The great opportunity in the new Maker Movement is the ability to be both local and global. Both artisanal and innovative. Both high tech and low-cost. Starting small and growing big, and most of all creating the sort of products that the world wants bit doesn’t know it yet, because those products don’t fit neatly into the mass economics of the old model.
   Anderson spends a lot of time talking about how new products are being developed and how they are being built using everything from now affordable 3D printers to using companies that can built the new products for the innovators including helping them with engineering, design, fabrication and assembly of the new products all in the small quantities required for product development and leading to mass production when the product takes off.
   By using companies who are offering integrated solution all an innovator needs is an idea, a credit card and a computer and he can see his product go from concept to reality in just a matter of days. It is not overly dramatic to say that a person can invent something on Monday and have Fed-Ex deliver the prototype to his front door on Friday! If that isn’t a miracle of our times, I’m not sure what is.
   From the book:
   “The use of common design file standards that allow anyone, if they desire to send their designs to commercial manufacturing services to be produced in any number, just as easily as they can fabricate them on their desktop. This radically foreshortens the path from idea to entrepreneurship as the Web did in software, information and content.”
   And there is optimism with Anderson talking about how “Real countries build things” and how that is want is really the backbone of our American culture.
   But we have to be ready for the changes that are occurring. That now and in the future we are going to see many many more companies building specialty products that are capable of changing the world.
   “The days of companies with names like “General Electric” and “General Mills” and “General Motors” are over. The money on the table is like Krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be exploited by smart, creative people.”
   I have to admit that I have read this book twice already, and I think it’s because I like the message so much. I love the optimism, the idea that creative people can get their ideas to market as quickly and cheaply as possible with a few barriers as possible.
   There is no more dealing with rigid gate keepers putting up barriers to keep people out. In publishing for example the days of the arrogant editor with his pile of manuscripts from anxious would be authors over. Now it’s “The hell with that editor, I’ll publish it myself!” the proof of that being that there are now a number of bestsellers that originated through electronic self-publishing. I love that idea.
   And now in terms of new product develop and in terms of people with great ideas being able to get those ideas to market as quickly and simply as possible, there has never been a better time.
   From the book:
   “On the product-development side, the Maker Movement tilts the balance toward cultures with the best innovation model, not the cheapest labor. Societies that have embraced “co-creation,” or community-based development, win. They are unbeatable for finding and harnessing the best talent and more motivated people in any domain. Look for those countries where the most vibrant Web communities flourish and the most innovative Web companies grow. Those are the values the predict success in any twenty first century market.”
   If you are feeling bad about where we are today and want to feel better, then read this book, if you are worried about the election and where this country is going read this book. And finally if you want to learn more about how you can go about getting your ideas developed and to market read this book because the author even provides a step of directions on how to develop your 21st Century Workshop.
   Like I said this is the most important book you will read this year and from the buzz that it is creating I believe it will become one of the cornerstone books of our generation

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4. Cuenta Chris Anderson de como los makers han regresado a los garages a realizar inventos después de la era http://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.

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5. Very interesting book for anyone trying to anticipate the next big thing.

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6. Very interesting

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7. un classico del marketing dei nostri tempi sulla stampa 3D.
   Tutti gli esempi e le discussioni proposte si focalizzano sul mercato americano USA, ma la forma mentis è applicabile anche alla nostra Europa.

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8. Um livro essencial para “abrir a cabeça” e analisar a realidade do movimento hobbista/maker com uma perspectiva atual. O autor trás inúmeros exemplos e conduz a interessantes reflexões sobre como podemos deixar de ser apenas consumidores.

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