Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

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.

Some of us say that we “live online,” but it’s not true when it comes to spending or living our everyday lives. Our commercial lives reside mostly in the real world of bricks and mortar, of food and clothes, of cars and houses, and, until some sci-fi future arrives where we’re just disembodied brains in vats, that will continue to be the case.

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

Bits are thrilling, but when it comes to the overall economy, it’s all about atoms.

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.

This ability—to manufacture “local or global” at will—is a huge advantage. That simple menu option compresses three centuries of industrial revolution into a single mouse click.

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

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.

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