Clearly the idea is strong, but have some downsides. One of them is piracy. Designers, architects and manufacturers are likely to face the problem currently faced by music industry. Fluid Forms makes an argument in a similar line and I did as well – in a short article on design and piracy from 2008. The problem however is best captured in an abstract of “Napster Fabbing”, Marshall Burns’ and James Howison’s presentation from 2001 quoted by Ponoko blog:

“If record companies had a fit over Napster, wait ’til manufacturers find out you can download Rolex.fab or Ferrari.fab and make them yourself.”

Clearly these problems will demand a new approach. However they do open new possibilities as well. Particularly the possibility of peer production of objects and, with time, of spaces as well. It’s easy to guess that the name of this blog is derived from this notion. Companies allowing it’s customers to customize their products on-line will have to adapt first since they are the ones most likely to suffer from eventual fraud. They are less immune for two reasons:

- their products are expressed entirely in a form of a code and the code is available online.

- their products are manufactured using CAM – technologies available not only to large-scale manufacturers but to private people as well.

It means that mass customization practitioners will soon have to figure out a new business model in which a product code is shared and open-sourced to some extend. When that happens the phrase “open-source design” will gain a new meaning – one similar to meaning of “open-source” in computer science community.

Last question is how far away are we from being able to manufacture “Rolex.fab” or “Ferrari.fab” using additive digital manufacturing techniques at home? Recently published report: “Road Map for Additive Fabrication: Identyfing of Freeform Processing” might be a good start for looking for an answer (I have found it via Replicator blog. It seems that the development in additive manufacturing technology takes place on an increasingly high pace and a new multi-material 3d printer from Objet proves that.

What is post-industrial design? Ponoko was until very recently based only in New Zealand. Yet on 5th of July 2009 they have announced the opening of a second manufacturing hub, located in San Francisco. This way they can ship to clients in US and nearby for a lot less. Is this the beggining of a new phenomena which can be refereed to as “distributed manufacturing”? One day perhaps we will again be able to produce locally, especially if the buzz about desktop 3d printing will eventually become common place. Desktop Factory is having some financial problems at the moment, but I believe “micromanufacturing” is only a question of time. Micromanufacturing combined with the potential of generative design, mass customization, social networking and web 2.0 in general all together constitute a new design paradigm, where needs of a single individuals may be met by a personalized approach and not reduced or approximated to a mass produced offer. In this new paradigm a digital instance of the product indeed becomes more important than it’s physical instance, so one of the features of a “spime” envisioned by Bruce Sterling is slowly becoming a feature of commercially available products.

It was proposed during the discussion in Turin that distributed digital fabrication, generative processes, mass customization, social networking and web 2.0 all contribute to the new, emerging paradigm of post-industrial design. Our aim during the workshop was to sketch a road map of possibilities and potential disruptive solutions related to this new paradigm. Those maps will soon be published on-line under CC.

Speaking about web 2.0, Twitter recently made it to the cover of the Time. Will Maker Bot, Desktop Factory or the term post-industrial design itself make it there any time soon?

Many thanks to Massimo Menichinelli and Todo for the invitation and hospitality.

I have just learned that Shapeways will be launching Beta Shops in 2009. The shops will enable designers to sell 3d printed objects directly to the customers. Designers’ responsibility will only be to upload a 3d model, while Shapeways will take care of all the rest (printing, shipping and customer service). Is it one of Sterling’s dreams about the spime coming true? Certainly – it is taking us one step closer to it.

Here is an excerpt from a press release:

“Shapeways, a 3D printing and production service, announced today the beta launch of the first ever Shapeways Shops, the Global Marketplace for innovative 3D printed Designs, which will offer artists, designers and hobbyists alike, a unique online platform to show and sell original designs to a worldwide audience; bridging the gap between the digital 3D models and real, tangible products.”

On top of that, designers will keep the copyright to the designs. The format of the file does not seem to be a problem too – Shapeways will accept most of them, including .STL. Lastly, setting the price of a particluar object will belong to the designer.

I’m really looking forward to see it up and running.

The oDesign is a new internet initiative which aims to enable peer to peer design. The website enables you to share .dxf files, licensed under CC. You can find some of the designs by Ronen Kadushin as well as the Fab@Home project, so it’s an interesting blend of hi-end design and grassroots digital fabrication movement, similar in principle to RepRap. With the digital fabrication paradigm looming large, the attempt to create a wiki-like website for files exchange is perfectly relevant. I would only like to see it expanding; A section for sharing codes used in generative design, for example, would be very usefull, especially that many of the Rhinoscript codes are written with fabbing in mind.

oDesign was created by Massimo Michelini. His thesis on Open p2p design is also available online or as a pdf (in English, Spanish and Italian, quite a treat). I’m looking forward to reading it.

Fab@home fabber