David Pescovitz on Boing Boing descibes a new initiative coming out of the Institute for the Future (http://iftf.org) that talks about radical changes occurring in the relationship between production and consumption. As he puts it:
Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections.
If there is going to be an explosion of people making things, it is critically important that they consider their intent in making those things (assuming we don’t want this to just be an explosion in the making of unnecessary throwaway things). This, to me anyway, means that we need to broaden the applicability of design education beyond just those people that explicitly are going to be joining the various design professions and make design education generally available and applicable to individuals suddenly empowered to make things.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/05/future-of-making-map.html
