Fab Lab Society?

Fab Lab Society?

Peter Troxler, Research Professor

What is Happening?

1.  Changes on the surface

2.  Changes underneath

3.  Changes in pracDce

What is Happening?




12,800,000 results 1,570,000 blogs 17,300,000 videos

519,000 discussions

Industrial RevoluDon

•  Neil Gershenfeld, 2005: Fab. The Coming RevoluDon on Your Desktop

•  Jeremy RiTin, 2011: The Third Industrial RevoluDon. How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.

•  Chris Anderson, 2012: Makers: The New Industrial RevoluDon

•  Peter Marsh, 2012: The New Industrial RevoluDon: Consumers, GlobalizaDon and the End of Mass ProducDon

Jeremy RiTin

[T]he conventional top-down organization of society that characterized

much of the economic, social, and political life of the fossil-fuel based

industrial revolutions is giving way to distributed and collaborative

relationships in the emerging green industrial era. We are in the midst of

a profound shift in the very way society is structured, away from

hierarchical power and toward lateral power. (Rifkin 2011, p. 36f.)

Jeremy RiTin

1st revoluDon AutomaDc prinDng press Steam-‐powered technology 19th century

3rd revoluDon Internet Renewables Smart buildings Smart grid E-‐mobility

2nd revoluDon Electrical communicaDon Oil-‐powered combusDon engine 20th century


3rd revoluDon Internet Renewable energy 21st century


© 2010 Kevin Dooley, cc-‐by © 1968, Elgin Cou

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© 2011 Waag Society, cc-‐by-‐nc-‐nd


3rd revoluDon Internet Renewable energy 21st century


© 1907 E.A. Thomson Bu`e-‐Silver Bow Public Library © 2009 mars_discovery_district, cc-‐by-‐nc-‐ sa

© 2011 adafruit, cc-‐by-‐nc-‐sa

•  Icon steam engine > conveyor belt > 3D printer

•  Actor capitalist > management consultant > maker

•  Structure paDarchical > hierarchical > lateral

•  Supply Chain colonial > global > conDnental / regional

•  Transport railway > automobile & air travel > ???

•  CiDes crowded inner ciDes > suburbia > ???

•  Social working class > middle class > ???

•  ConsumpDon consume > mass consumpDon > prosumer

•  Media newspaper > radio > social media, UGC?

•  Encyclopedia Diderot > Britannica > Wikipedia

•  Sofware electromechanical (?) > proprietary > open source?

•  Design craf > design > open design

What is Happening?




Chris Anderson

•  2011: Atoms are the New Bits (Wired) •  2012: Makers. The New Industrial RevoluDon.

•  “Maker RevoluDon” •  Custom-‐fabricated, do-‐it-‐yourself product design and creaDon; US focus

Neil Gershenfeld

•  2005: Fab. The Next RevoluDon on Your Desktop

•  2012: How to Make Almost Anything. The Digital FabricaDon RevoluDon. (Foreign Affairs)

•  “Personal Digital FabricaDon” •  Personal fabricaDon for a market of one •  Locally develop soluDons to local problems

Alvin Toffler

•  1970: Future Shock •  1980: The Third Wave (2006 republished as RevoluDonary Wealth)

•  Post-‐Industrial Society

James R. Beniger

•  1986: Control RevoluDon. Technological and Economid Origins of the InformaDon Society.

•  “a society's ability to maintain control – at all levels from interpersonal to internaDonal relaDons – will be directly proporDonal to the development of its informaDon technologies”

David Noble

•  1988: Forces of ProducDon. A Social History of Industrial AutomaDon.

•  division between white collar and blue collar work

•  struggle of managers to gain control over workers

•  “military thrust toward total control [that] indulged technical enthusiasms while it raDfied managerial propensiDes”

Shoshanna Zuboff

•  1988: In the Age of the Smart Machine

•  2002 (together with James Maxmin): The Support Economy Why CorporaDons are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism

•  “TransacDon Crisis” •  Example: Old Aged Peoples’ Homes

Shumpei Kumon

•  Info-‐Socionomics

•  2004: 情報社会学序説 ― ラストモダンの時代を生きる (Living in the age of Last Modern. IntroducDon to Info-‐Socionomics)

•  "Wisdom game" as dominant paradigm in InformaDon society

Umar Haque

•  2011: The New Capitalist Manifesto Building A DisrupDvely Be`er Business.

Yochai Benkler

•  2002: Commons-‐based Peer-‐ProducDon

•  2006: Wealth of Networks 2011: The Penguin and the Leviathan

Beniger – Control RevoluDon Noble – Forces of ProducDon

Zuboff – Smart Machine: Technology as OpDon

Toffler – Post-‐Industrial Society Kumon – Info-‐Socionomics Benkler – Peer ProducDon RiTin – Lateral Power

Anderson – “Makers” Gershenfeld – InvenDve Power

of the World

Zuboff / Maxim – Distributed Capitalism

Haque – ConstrucDve Capitalism

What is Happening?




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