something to get excited about

I've been watching slowly getting excited about the futurist idea of 'diy manufacture', or 'personal fabrication on demand', 'atom based manufacture' and 'micro factories'.  What I'm thinking of is that in some futurist utopia (think Jetsons), if a consumer wants an item they just download a design, adjust it if they wish to personalise it or modify it to their taste, then put it into a 1mx1m box that will then manufacture it.

While in the early days designs will be restricted to available materials, in the future surely with nanotech and dna and stuff the opportunities are limitless? Think of the impact that will have on the global order of supply and demand. Supply will become limitless so there potentially would be no 'unmet demand' for material products.  Instead, in the utopia, people may begin to value more highly non-materials such as experiences, ethics and values.  Utopia indeed.

These articles allude to it:

Kurzweil says:
A lot of pioneering work was done in this area by Eric Drexler in the 1980s and 1990s.  His work included designs for many of the essential nanotech building blocks – including machines which can pick and place single atoms as part of the building process (picture a device which looks like a crane with a single arm which can ‘pick up’ a single atom using a chemical process).
Since then various nano-scale devices have been built in the lab, including a molecular sized motor created out of fifty eight atoms by Ben Feringa at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
As I mentioned in the first post of this series the key feature size of technology is shrinking at an exponential rate.  At the current rate of approximately a factor of four per linear dimension per decade the feature sizes for most electronic and many mechanical technologies will be in the nanotech range (under one hundred nanometers) by the 2020s.  The picture above shows a nano-robot at work in the bloodstream – something Kurzweil believes we will see in 10-20 years from now.

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how a new manufacturing technology will change the world

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 “How cool would it be if, in the near future, we all had machines that would manufacture any products we need? Already, there are inklings of that possibility” 

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In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits, and volunteer community design

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personal fabrication on demand

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open source hardware

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Give the NBN a chance

Artists tend to flock to big cities where their art can be bought and appreciated, but economic hard times are sending artists fleeing towards cheaper rents on homes and studio space.

''Where can artists find arms welcoming enough to provide a chance to sustain their careers? Well, as it happens, perhaps sensing an opportunity in the leveled fields of the current economy several of America’s bleakest, and most economically depressed, cities—Detroit, Baltimore, and Cleveland, among others—have begun making their case to become the next American artistic epicenter. All of these places have begun offering incentives like housing allowances (or otherwise cheap housing options), grants and other competitive awards, and other support to artists, even as they promise at least some of the cultural amenities—museums, arts events, and the like—that one can find in the Big Cities.''

US Midwest is making a comeback - get the NBN up and running in Australia and the same resilience  may happen in the Australian outback

Queensland: all systems red

BORING

I am utterly BORED with the news out of MIDEM, the European music industry conference.  In fact I'm BORED with all the music industry news I'm reading at the moment.  It's more of the same stuff we've been hearing for years, and being broadcast as if it's a new finding.


It appears the industry has reached a stalemate, and it's STALE, mate.  There's lots of innovative digital startups, but they are frozen by major label licensing tactics and neanderthal legislation.  The law cannot keep up with technology, and the major labels have been using that to their advantage for years to shore up their falling revenue streams.  


WHAT CAN BREAK THIS STALEMATE? The failure of EMI? I don't think so. The rise and replacement of the majors by new majors (Live Nation etc.)? I don't think so.  Apple tried. Consumers? I don't think so, although this has promise but will stall for years in court.  I need to think on this more, but so far the only thing I can see changing this scenario is musicians leaving the majors?  Or everyone leaving the industry out of BOREDOM or frustration.  And what will happen then? The market for music still exists.... need to ponder more.  


The global copyright database project is interesting but can't see it contributing to innovation because it will,no doubt, use a sample technique when the technology exists to be all inclusive. Apart from that I just can't see anything ahead that can break this stalemate and effect sustainable change for the better.