In: Bruce Sterling: State of the World 2007
By: Jamais Cascio (cascio) Thu 11 Jan 07 08:38
“Pessimism is a luxury of good times. In difficult times, pessimism is a
self-fulfilling, self-inflicted death sentence.”–Norwegian social scientist Evelin Lindner
I choose to be optimistic.
Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution
Man, I can’t even describe how cool this is. It’s home CNC machine for fabricating objects out of different types of materials. Say you need a special wrench for a one-off nut in your car? Just create or download the plans and print one out for yourself out of a block of plastic. Or use plans for a model of a baseball player, put your kid’s face on it and throw some more plastic in the machine.
The real treat is near the end of the article where they talk about the guy who made a fab that could make its own parts. Self-reproducing fabricators in the home! For $2000! It makes me giddy just thinking about it.
Your kids may never buy physical toys or other simple (and in the future, not-so-simple) objects. They’ll download the plans and print them out.
[tags]future,diy,fab,diamond+age,science[/tags]
This is Bruce Sterling’s State of the World “talk”. It’s Bruce talking and answering questions about how he sees the world starting 2007. Bruce is a science fiction writer by trade but he’s really a professional thinker (which really all sf writers should be but sadly aren’t, as evidenced by the cover of ASIMOV’S sf magazine this month which features an Icarus figure with metal wings for pete’s sake. Sometimes I want to shake sf writers and yell THIS ISN’T THE FIFTIES! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND INTO THE 21ST CENTURY! But I digress.). He travels all over and his personal HQ is in Serbia so he sees a lot more of the world than most people. He’s also an inveterate pulse-taker so he has his fingers on a lot of different areas. Even if you’re not an sf fan you should read what he has to say. You might get your mind blown. Every time I read something of his or hear a speech he’s given, it’s like a big old shock to my electrodes that breathes life into my piecemeal brain. I feel like I should be writing or building something again. 2006 was kind of a Sit Around And Be Lazy For No Reason year but I’m planning on making 2007 a Go Do Something year.
Thanks Bruce.
[tags]future, bruce+sterling, world, green, science fiction[/tags]
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Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series) by Mike Cohn
