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Loading... FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabricationby Neil Gershenfeld
![]() None No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() This book considers how the industrial revolution has almost gone full circle. From the early days of artisan and craft production, to the massive factories that can turn out numerous copies of the same item, the future of production will start to be possible from your desk or office. He considers the new rapid prototyping machines and looks at the way the developing world can use these tools to make their own lives easier. The author goes into some detail on some basic projects that anyone can undertake. It’s not too bad, but technologies have moved on swiftly since it was published, and I think that Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson will give an more up to date point of view Gershenfeld, who runs MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, foresees a time when computers will upgrade from PCs to PFs, or personal fabricators. This eye-opening survey of "fab labs" completes the progression in Gershenfeld's earlier studies of the overlapping of computer science and physical science, such as When Things Start to Think (1999). no reviews | add a review
What if you could someday put the manufacturing power of an automobile plant on your desktop? It may sound far-fetched-but then, thirty years ago, the notion of "personal computers" in every home sounded like science fiction. According to Neil Gershenfeld, the renowned MIT scientist and inventor, the next big thing is personal fabrication the ability to design and produce your own products, in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics with industrial tools. Personal fabricators (PF's) are about to revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago.
Personal fabricators (PF's) are about to revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago. PF's will bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world, by being able to make almost anything-including new personal fabricators. In FAB, Gershenfeld describes how personal fabrication is possible today, and how it is meeting local needs with locally developed solutions. He and his colleagues have created "fab labs" around the world, which, in his words, can be interpreted to mean "a lab for fabrication, or simply a fabulous laboratory." Using the machines in one of these labs, children in inner-city Boston have made saleable jewelry from scrap material. Villagers in India used their lab to develop devices for monitoring food safety and agricultural engine efficiency. Herders in the Lyngen Alps of northern Norway are developing wireless networks and animal tags so that their data can be as nomadic as their animals. And students at MIT have made everything from a defensive dress that protects its wearer's personal space to an alarm clock that must be wrestled into silence. These experiments are the vanguard of a new science and a new era-an era of "post-digital literacy" in. No library descriptions found. |
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