Industrial Revolution. Part 2. Atoms - new bits
Continuing an exciting article from the American magazine Wired "In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits" (last time I talked about the Rally Fighter - the car created by the "crowd" ).
Radical transformations in any industry occur when control over the industry is transferred from companies, clans, governments, to the ordinary person. The Internet has made publishing, television and communications available to the masses, which has led to a radical increase in the number of participants in the digital world - the long tail of bits (long tail of bits).
Now the same thing happens with production - the long tail of things.
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All the tools that have been used in industry, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to ordinary people. Anyone who has an idea and competence can run assembly lines in China by simply pressing a few keys on their laptop. A few days later, the prototype will be at his door and, if everything is in order, you can press a few more keys in order to launch the product into a full production, making hundreds and thousands of copies. Thus, everyone can create their own virtual mini-factory: the products will be assembled and delivered by subcontractors that serve hundreds of such customers at the same time.
Today, mini-factories produce anything from cars and bicycles to furniture to order in any possible design that you can dream of! The collective potential of millions of garage enthusiasts is about to be realized in global markets, which will not require millions of investments and high-performance equipment. Previously, a typical web start-up was a “three guys with a laptop”, but now this same description is applicable for a hardware company.
“The hardware is now starting to look more and more like software,” says MIT professor Eric von Hippel. And this is not only because there is a lot of “software” in the “hardware”, when the products are actually intellectual property wrapped in a beautiful shell, be it the software code that drives the mechanisms, or CAD packages in which future devices are modeled. This is also made possible by the availability of available tools, web collaboration and the spread of the Internet.
We have already seen something similar: it happened before monolithic industries, such as the music industry or publishing, began to fall apart when many small players appeared on the market. Lower the barrier to entry and the crowd will rush in!
Currently, suppliers of materials and equipment can serve both garage mini-factories and such giants as Sony. This change was made possible by two factors. First, the beginning of the widespread use of cheap and powerful means of rapid prototyping, which even people far from technology can now take advantage of. And, secondly, the economic crisis has led to the fact that many Chinese manufacturers have radically revised their methods of working with customers, becoming more flexible, web-oriented, ready to fulfill any wish of the customer.
As a result, innovation has moved from the online world to the real world. Cory Doctorow in his book “Makers” says: “The days of companies such as 'General Electric', 'General Mills', 'General Motors' are numbered. There are billions of opportunities on the market that are open to creative and enterprising people. ”
The revival of the garage business leads to the success of events where people who like to do everything themselves (maker faires) and platforms where people can get together under one roof to create something new (hackerspaces) come together. Peering production, open source, creating a “mob”, filling users (peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, user-generated content) - all these digital concepts can now be applied in the world of atoms. The web was just the beginning. The revolution is now happening in the real world.
In short, atoms are new bits.
To be continued.
Radical transformations in any industry occur when control over the industry is transferred from companies, clans, governments, to the ordinary person. The Internet has made publishing, television and communications available to the masses, which has led to a radical increase in the number of participants in the digital world - the long tail of bits (long tail of bits).
Now the same thing happens with production - the long tail of things.
')
All the tools that have been used in industry, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to ordinary people. Anyone who has an idea and competence can run assembly lines in China by simply pressing a few keys on their laptop. A few days later, the prototype will be at his door and, if everything is in order, you can press a few more keys in order to launch the product into a full production, making hundreds and thousands of copies. Thus, everyone can create their own virtual mini-factory: the products will be assembled and delivered by subcontractors that serve hundreds of such customers at the same time.
Today, mini-factories produce anything from cars and bicycles to furniture to order in any possible design that you can dream of! The collective potential of millions of garage enthusiasts is about to be realized in global markets, which will not require millions of investments and high-performance equipment. Previously, a typical web start-up was a “three guys with a laptop”, but now this same description is applicable for a hardware company.
“The hardware is now starting to look more and more like software,” says MIT professor Eric von Hippel. And this is not only because there is a lot of “software” in the “hardware”, when the products are actually intellectual property wrapped in a beautiful shell, be it the software code that drives the mechanisms, or CAD packages in which future devices are modeled. This is also made possible by the availability of available tools, web collaboration and the spread of the Internet.
We have already seen something similar: it happened before monolithic industries, such as the music industry or publishing, began to fall apart when many small players appeared on the market. Lower the barrier to entry and the crowd will rush in!
Currently, suppliers of materials and equipment can serve both garage mini-factories and such giants as Sony. This change was made possible by two factors. First, the beginning of the widespread use of cheap and powerful means of rapid prototyping, which even people far from technology can now take advantage of. And, secondly, the economic crisis has led to the fact that many Chinese manufacturers have radically revised their methods of working with customers, becoming more flexible, web-oriented, ready to fulfill any wish of the customer.
As a result, innovation has moved from the online world to the real world. Cory Doctorow in his book “Makers” says: “The days of companies such as 'General Electric', 'General Mills', 'General Motors' are numbered. There are billions of opportunities on the market that are open to creative and enterprising people. ”
The revival of the garage business leads to the success of events where people who like to do everything themselves (maker faires) and platforms where people can get together under one roof to create something new (hackerspaces) come together. Peering production, open source, creating a “mob”, filling users (peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, user-generated content) - all these digital concepts can now be applied in the world of atoms. The web was just the beginning. The revolution is now happening in the real world.
In short, atoms are new bits.
To be continued.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/93202/
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