Monday, December 24, 2012

The Weightless Economy According to Chris Anderson



Best known for his coinage of the "long tail" and then the "free economy," Chris Anderson editor of Wired magazine is at it again with his latest innovation: the "maker."   We're in the midst of a 'new industrial revolution,' -- the first one took off in Britain between 1700 and 1850 with factories and industry mills; the second one was in 1850 to the 1920s with the T-Ford Model assembly line and the Taylor's scientific management.   The Web has allowed for a do-it-yourself (DIY) model that's paved the way for a 'weightless economy' in which trade is intangible information, services, and intellectual property rather than physical goods - literally realizing Marx's assertion that "all that is solid melts into air."

Makerspace should be a key term in 2013 and beyond.   Digital experts such as Don Tascott has discussed elements of this in Macrowikinomics but Anderson furthers the boundaries of the digital into the physical arguing that entrepreneurship can be democratized and opened up to anyone with an internet connection.  But why stop there?  Makerspaces can exist in learning and education.   The blogosphere is already buzzing with early prototypes of makerspaces, including the a recent Forbes article about Fayetteville Free Library's first makerspace lab featuring 3D printers and a hackers laboratory.

Education is the next realm.  Take a look at the website Makerspace, which takes  the makerspace concept and applies it in an educational context. Why not allow educators and students to learn from one another? Makerspace introduces high schools to small-scale, distributed digital design and manufacturing technologies in order to help their students realize the creative potential of cutting-edge hardware and software tools. The goal is to show students that they can have an idea, design it on a computer, and make it into a real object. It supports this goal by designing tools (software and hardware) that are low-cost with interfaces that are powerful, yet intuitive. Its byline is simply:
Building a resource for Educators and Makers working to inspire young people to make projects in art, craft, engineering, green design, math, music, science, technology, and more

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