Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

The process of making physical stuff has started to look more like the process of making digital stuff. The image of a few smart people changing the world with little more than an Internet connection and an idea increasingly describes manufacturing, too.

Computers amplify human potential: they not only give people the power to create but can also spread their ideas quickly, creating communities, markets, even movements.

West is in the midst of a job crisis. Much of what economic growth the developed world can summon these days comes from improving productivity, which is driven by getting more output per worker. That’s great, but the economic consequence is that if you can do the same or more work with fewer employees, you should.

The Web Age has liberated bits; they are cheaply created and travel cheaply, too. This is fantastic; the weightless economics of bits has reshaped everything from culture to economics. It is perhaps the defining characteristic of the twenty-first century

The beauty of the Web is that it democratized the tools both of invention and of production.

As Marx observed, power belongs to those who control the means of production.

The biggest transformation is not in the way things are done, but in who’s doing it.

Atoms are weighty, and so are the consequences of their failure. When you shut down a website, nobody cares. When you shut down a factory, lots of people lose their jobs, and the debts can haunt the owners for the rest of their lives.

The past ten years have been about discovering new ways to create, invent, and work together on the Web. The next ten years will be about applying those lessons to the real world.

Talk about “controlling the tools of production”: you (you!) can now set factories into motion with a mouse click.