The future of fabbing

This right here is a very amusing animation about the future of manufacturing. It starts out almost as the typical corny design video showing first a problem, and then introducing the solution, but this video emphasizes also the evolution of manufacturing products over time, which is a nice mix.

So according to this video, we are going from mass production to mass customization, from central manufacturing facilities to a decentralized system, and eventually to an increasingly intelligent system where we as individuals have the technology to scan objects -even when they are broken- and reproduce them in any kind of material we like. We can even determine a product's internal structure, based on a kind of molecular, DNA-like, blueprint.

This way, production of everyday items becomes more and more biological, with products becoming more and more adapted to their individual environment of use.

Web 782.0?

Nike has taken on the idea that in the future, products might not be mass manufactured by people, but just emerge from nature when we have genetically altered it or taught it certain behavioural patterns. Where insects can now be seen as nature's robots, uncontrollable and unpredictable, they soon could be people's robots. If controlled through the internet, online and offline webs can finally merge.

Yes, paradigm changes are still slowly creeping in... this is not merely nice imagery.