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. 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 which we will be as familiar with digital fabrication as we are with the of information processing. In this groundbreaking book, the scientist pioneering the revolution in personal fabrication reveals exactly what is being done, and how. The technology of FAB will allow people to create the objects they desire, and the kind of world they want to live in.
“The director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms takes a captivating look at the future of invention, positing a world in which the home fabrication system is as ubiquitous as the home computer….Accessible, inspiring and wonderfully human: sure to spark the imagination.” (Kirkus)
Customer Reviews
Introductory book on MITs developing FABLabs:
As an introduction to the idea of personal fabrication this book works out quite well. The MIT FABLabs have been set up in a number of places around the world and this book tells us of the experiences that MIT students, et al, have undergone in setting them up and the things that they find people interested in making.
There is nothing in this book about other people’s developments in personal fabrication (such as Fab@home or RepRap) but these may have occurred after the book was written.
All in all the book is a useful starting point introducing people to the perhaps novel idea of personal manufacturing, a growing field of endeavour.
An easy introduction to the process:
FAB: THE COMING REVOLUTION ON YOUR DESKTOP - FROM PERSONAL COMPUTERS TO PERSONAL FABRICATION covers a new prospect in desktop applications: the ability to manufacture products at home on the home computer. Personal fabricators hold much potential and promise to be tomorrow’s hits, and FAB surveys the new technology of digital fabrication, from inexpensive ways to build large solar energy collectors to specialized radio collars for herding goats in Norway. Fab labs build digital fabrications using logic, and FAB is an easy introduction to the process which general-interest collections will want.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
This is not a how to book.:
I think some of the reviewers here were expecting a how to book and are missing the point. This book is more of a sumation of some of the possibilities that microfabrication can bring to the world. This was a very good read and is inspiring to those with imagination. Well, if you don’t have imagination, you probably aren’t going to do too well when microfabrication tech truely becomes much more mainstream in the next 10 years–and it is coming despite any unenlightened assertions to the contrary. The 3D printing technology is already being proven and people with brains realize how fast printing technology comes down in price.
Also, I’ve seen a computer controlled wood milling machine on the market for under 2k now; metal milling won’t be too far behind. A clever person could put such things to good use in a small business framework.
If you have an imagination, this book will be a good read. If you don’t, well, no technology can cure that lol.
Thank you MIT:
This book is such a gift for those who know what science , in the right hands , can do for humanity.
Fab is not happening..:
Despite many good reviews on this book, I find it disappointing. The book is a historical summary of the work that MIT labs did. Neil got his PhD in Physics from Cornell University, dabbled into Computer Programming, examples were on C programming and some Assembly Language codes. It is easy to impress physics students these topics. But all computer students learn C and Assembly in the 1970s. They have very limited use today. Most of the equipment, laser cutters, and others were used in the 1960s. Yes, they may be useful in India, Ghana, but Norway?
Fast forward to 2007, Microsoft is doing C# (sharp) .NET programming, Windows Vista and Office 2007. Jobs are created to support all these new softwares. With globalization and outsourcing, USA manufacturing jobs are done to 23% and service sector jobs are 77%.
With NSF grants and student enthusiasm, Neil’s CBA reseach continues. But MIT graduates do not get jobs in manufacturing or personal fabrications. They mostly find work in programming, business systems, or work in the financial sector in NYC. Is FAB a good training for these jobs?
Conclusion, it is great that we can bring manufacturing back, but the reality is: FAB is not happening in USA any time soon.
