Nick Taylor of the Genomicon blog left a great comment on my post about personal fabrication concepts post that deserve extra attention. He writes:
The killer-app of the DIY-hardware revolution is probably software.
Something that can sit between the user and the machine… a cross between Lego and Spore… but I think it needs to do more than create toys with no moving parts.
The killer-apps of software were often to do with communication – that was the driver of 2D printing… we were already using paper as a communication medium – so much that entire forests fell for it… and the thing with communication is that the output tends to be unique to the individual, and there tends to be quite a lot of it.
We’ve had thousands of years of practice at this. 3D communication? It’s a lot more subtle because there is a textual/phonetic link… and coming from the other direction is the fact that we’ve had a hundred years at least of conditioning towards thinking that a physical product is identical to its mass-produced siblings… to the extent that this has become an indicator of quality. I mean look at supermarket tomatoes… they’re identical. The ones that are slightly different are turned into puree… to hide their individuality.
I think possibly the change (if it happens at all) will be a generational one. The kids will start doing something, that the grown-ups simply don’t understand.
These points are absolutely correct. For customization to hit the mainstream, companies need to develop compelling product offerings available only with customization technology. FigurePrints and RockBand figurines are a good start, but $80-160 statues have a limited market. The main challenge is now for designers to work within the limitations of the technology and produce stuff that amazes people.
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