Back in the day famous people were quoted as saying the wildest things such as:
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson (President of Digital Equipment Corporation) at the Convention of the World Future Society in Boston in 1977
And then came the pc revolution.
Others have said likewise wildly innacurate prophesies:
Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
And then came the fab/lab revolution.
Are we now on the cusp of a new generation of technology, one that may have as significant an impact on society as the computer has had? Will it result in what we expect?
There is now a hobbyist priced fab lab that you can build in your own home. Check it out. [Fab@Home].
The estimated cost of making one of your own fab labs at home is $2,300. No precisely-machined-micrometer-lathe-turned parts required, this is apparently all possible with off-the-shelf parts.
The FabLab@Home project has been compared to the Altair 8800 which was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. [linky]
Economies of Abundance
This has many repurcussions. If you can make what you want when you want then the product of value becomes the plans on how to make it. The information. The transition from an industrial economy to an information economy shifts even further into the realm of data supremecy.