Open Source Hardware: Industrial Revolution or DIY craft fair?
The Debate: In “Atoms Are the New Bits,” Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson announces the next Industrial Revolution: let’s call it “open-source hardware.” In a sprited rebuttal, “Atoms Are Not Bits; Wired Is Not A Business Magazine,” Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson says Anderson is peering through a glass, darkly (or else sniffing glue). The revolution he breathlessly describes is called outsourcing, Johnson argues, and there’s nothing new about that.
The Arguments: Wired contends a new industrial revolution is in the works as open source design meets open source hardware. Hackable, modular components can be used to create innovative products and pave the way to a ‘glocal’ model of micro-manufacturing. Low-cost prototyping and tool access open the field to potential ’small-batch’ entrepreneurs. The increasing willingness of global suppliers to woo small-batch production (and take credit cards) makes such business models possible on an unprecedented scale. Innovative designers in consumer electronics (CE) and beyond face fewer barriers to entry than ever before. Expect a deluge of upstart design firms, Wired says, with “virtual” manufacturing facilities; this is the future of “US” manufacturing.
Gizmodo, however, argues that it is the present of “US” manufacturing—it’s called outsourcing. Western designers effectively brand Chinese conglomerates. You can find the material analogs of these “virtual” factories in smoggy China, with workers hunched over baseboards. If there’s anything remarkable in this story, thank FedEx, which has found a way to ship small orders incredibly cheap. And if there’s anything new about the phenomena Wired presents as signs of the next IR, it’s hardly on a revolutionary scale. Dippy DIYers and hobbyists starting small-run production of niche products by using new tools does not a revolution make.
Who’s Right?
Though prognostication is a fascinating but inexact art; we’re going to go with Wired. This will probably not suprise those of you who read our two-part series “Apple and the Bug,” which dealt with the possibilities of open-source hardware driving innovation in CE. We argued that if open design conditions could meet open manfucturing conditions, ‘open innovation’ would have a more radical impact, and might just mark the expiration date on product development secrecy à la Apple.
One of our readers, Amir Kassaei, suggested that we were wrong to make it an issue of open vs. closed innovation environments. He noted that, actually, “Apple is very open during the observation and ideation process but very closed during the protyping, implementation and execution phases.” (He suggested we watch this video to get a grip on how “Open” works at Apple.)
In fact, Kassaei hits on one of the post’s main points: being “open” during the design process does not change so much about the other phases of the production process. Using intelligent crowdsourcing (e.g., using online competitions to identify top talent and solutions) goes perfectly well with industrial secrecy at other levels of production. Until more open design conditions meet more open prototyping, manufacturing, and re-integration of hacked improvements, ‘OI’ acts to enhance existing industrial processes.
Gizmodo observes this relatively limited impact of OI on industrial models) in re-examining the use of OI by media-beloved newcomer Local Motors. Essentially, LM intelligently crowdsourced a car design, and then assembles a kit car out of parts from BMW and other manufacturers. All the “important” parts are designed and sourced in the usual way. Obviously, this isn’t going to put BMW out of business, nor will it challenge existing paradigms. Finding a way to intelligently crowdsource the whole car, build it and then distribute it on a mass scale, however, would. Maybe that day is still a long way off, but it’s definitely on our technological horizon.
A “Total” Open Innovation Paradigm?
Take the case of BugLabs, a manufacturer of open-source modular CE components discussed in our previous post. BugLabs allows you to build CE products (from heart monitors to “iPones”) from hackable modular parts and re-integrate hacked improvements back into the base product. What if you wed this whole process to intelligently crowdsourced design. Wouldn’t the pace of innovation eventually outstrip the innovation of any closed shop (like Apple)?
Wireless seems to say yes. Commenters on its post as well as those on Gizmodo seem more troubled by the triumphant tone of Wired’s announcement than by its substance. Apple-like closed shops offer “secure,” “middle-class” jobs. If we’re in for another Industrial Revolution, we can certainly expect all the pains that come with losing security.
It seems, thought, that neither article underlines the most interesting, potentially disruptive change driving Wired’s “new revolution”: the difference between prototyping and manufacturing machines seems to be narrowing.
Prototype-Machines or Mini-Factories?
Wired identifies improvements in prototyping tools as a driving force of “small-batch manufacturing.” These tools make it possible to model ideas cheaply. Access to “real” manufacturing facilities is the next step to getting a project profitable. But in the course of its description, Wired doesn’t acknowledge that the difference between prototyping and manufacturing machines is beginning to blur.
Indeed, as open-source hardware, some of the prototyping machines (or 3-D “printers) are not only driving ’small-batch’ manufacturing, but privileged examples of the changes that Wired describes.
MakerBot, which lets users create plastic 3-D models of their designs, is itself an example of open-source hardware. Their bots are built from modular components, which are enhanced and then rolled back into the base product. Here’s how Wired describes it:
Out of the box, the MakerBot produces plastic parts from digital files. Want a certain gear right now? Download a design and print it out yourself. Want to modify an object you already have? Scan it (a researcher at the University of Cambridge has developed a technology that will allow you to create a 3-D file by rotating the object in front of your webcam), tweak the bits you want to change with the free SketchUp software from Google, and load it into the ReplicatorG app. Within minutes, you have a whole new physical object: a rip, mix, and burn of atoms.
Here’s what Makerbot says about itself: “Makerbot prints with ABS plastic: it’s your own little factory.”
So, Makerbot allows us to imagine a machine that downloads open-source designs and then not only “prints” out a prototype but replicates a finished-product. What, at the limit, are the production possibilities for these types of replicator machines (of which Makerbot represents only the first generation)? How will considerations of scale and material supply and distribution change as a result? Is this the best hope for re-localizing the production chain?
Is this the future of manufacturing or are we drinking the Wired Kool-Aid? Tell us in the comments!
Tags: Chris Anderson, DIY, Gizmodo, Industrial Revolution, Joel Johnson, Local Motors, MakerBot, OI, Open Innovation, open source hardware, prototypes, wired
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