I can be a pessimistic bloke, but I have to say: It's an exciting time to be alive.
I've just come back from the MakerFaire, where you can't help but notice that the next revolution is on it's way. The same hacker ethic that made computers great is coming to the physical world. Anything you want to build, it's suddenly getting a lot easier to do. And people are sharing the skills and the designs for physical objects with the same open source ethic that built the Internet.
There's gizmos like this for making real-world 3D objects from computer models. - Now less than 1,000$, as a build-it-yourself kit. People are comparing this to the early Apple computer kits, and it's a fair comparison.
There are computer controlled laser cutters and plasma cutters that will burn through wood or steel with millimeter precision, letting you cut out parts to assemble just by drawing the shapes you want to cut out in photoshop, dropping the material to be cut on the bed, and pressing the start button.
There are easy controller boards that let you plug together sensors and motors and so on to react to the real world, in the real world, automatically. 35$ gets you an Arduino board that does the job. An Italian college professor designed these to be so straightforward that he could teach electronics tinkering classes to art students, but they did the job so well that the engineers wanted to play, too.
Best of all, there are communities forming to share the know-how for how to use these things. I signed up with TechShop.ws. For the same price as my monthly gym membership, they provide access to all these tools and tons more. Bring in your own sheet steel and toss it in the laser cutter, or whatever you need to do for your project. They offer classes in all the machines, cheap, too.
There's never been a better time to be a creative.
I've just come back from the MakerFaire, where you can't help but notice that the next revolution is on it's way. The same hacker ethic that made computers great is coming to the physical world. Anything you want to build, it's suddenly getting a lot easier to do. And people are sharing the skills and the designs for physical objects with the same open source ethic that built the Internet.
There's gizmos like this for making real-world 3D objects from computer models. - Now less than 1,000$, as a build-it-yourself kit. People are comparing this to the early Apple computer kits, and it's a fair comparison.
There are computer controlled laser cutters and plasma cutters that will burn through wood or steel with millimeter precision, letting you cut out parts to assemble just by drawing the shapes you want to cut out in photoshop, dropping the material to be cut on the bed, and pressing the start button.
There are easy controller boards that let you plug together sensors and motors and so on to react to the real world, in the real world, automatically. 35$ gets you an Arduino board that does the job. An Italian college professor designed these to be so straightforward that he could teach electronics tinkering classes to art students, but they did the job so well that the engineers wanted to play, too.
Best of all, there are communities forming to share the know-how for how to use these things. I signed up with TechShop.ws. For the same price as my monthly gym membership, they provide access to all these tools and tons more. Bring in your own sheet steel and toss it in the laser cutter, or whatever you need to do for your project. They offer classes in all the machines, cheap, too.
There's never been a better time to be a creative.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
zaksmith:
hmm...
lemonkid:
Yeah the whole maker culture thats springing up is pretty sweeeeet