They might not go away permanently, but I think solutions like the Spore Creature Creator go a long way to mitigate them. That is a brilliantly designed CAD program that allows a total novice to create something with no training, but also allows a pro to create amazing objects that the designers of the program never imagined (http://bit.ly/10nrXs). I think all of the barriers i mentioned can be similarly addressed via design or product management.

But I do think that the problems you've described will never really go away – the customer will never become the designer. If these technologies are going to become mainstream, it will be because business models arise in which the customer can do some useful personalisation without having to do design work.

I just can't imagine what those business models might be, and I wish I could.

I think it becomes an issue of semantics at some point, though the issues still pertain to your definition of customization. Take the company ProperCloth. They are mass customizing dress shirts. They are nice shirts and the site is well designed, but are also more expensive than normal and clothing is an area most men would like to leave to pros. I don't think each problem will apply to every product category. It is just an interesting list to consider when designing customization services, however you define them!

Services like Shapeways and Ponoko are really about creation – the user designs the whole thing, and the service does the making. And, as you say, that's hard for a user to exploit without expending a lot of design effort.

What I imagine when I think about customisation is something more like (for example) custom-fitted clothing, where the overall design is taken care of by the manufacturer but each pair of trousers is actually made for the measurements of a particular customer. That's the kind of business that can (in principle) exploit the new manufacturing technologies to do a better job in the old markets.

I am ashamed to say I can't find any good examples outside of clothing. There seem to be a bunch of custom-shirt and custom-jeans companies, who are presumably using laser cutting and old-fashioned sewing, but nothign else. Are they out there somewhere ?

Do you know if anyone is actually doing any of that ?

This is good advice. I feel the same way about books, but the problem is that you often don't know what the exact book you want to read is until after you've read it. Certainly that was my experience with The Name of the Rose.