Fab: The Coming Revolution On Your Desktop - From Personal Computers To Personal Fabrication

Renowned scientist and inventor Neil Gershenfeld describes how personal fabricators are about to revolutionise the world just as personal computers did a generation ago. What if you could put the manufacturing power of a car plant on your desktop? According to MIT scientist and inventor Neil Gershenfeld, the next big thing is personal fabrication (PF) - the ability to design and produce your own products in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics and industrial tools. PF's will bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world by being able to make almost anything. In "Fab", Gershenfeld describes how PF is possible today, and how it is being used to meet local needs with locally developed solutions. In "Fab Labs" created around the world by Gershenfeld and his colleagues, villagers in India have developed devices to monitor food safety and agricultural engine efficiency. Herders in the Lyngen Alps of northern Norway are developing wireless networks and animal tags so their data can be as nomadic as their animals. And students at MIT have made everything from a defensive dress that protects its wearer's personal space, to an alarm clock that must be wrestled into silence. These experiments are the vanguard of a new science and a new era of "post-digital literacy". In this ground-breaking book, the scientist who has pioneered the revolution in PF reveals exactly what is being done, and how this technology will allow all of us to create the objects we desire and the kind of world we want to live in.