DEMOCRATIZING PERSONAL FABRICATION
As an industrial designer, I would like to point out a strange fact in the field of industrial design; we do not care about how to make things we use in everyday life. Even after the information revolution reached individuals, we, consumers, still behave the same as we did in the 20th century. That is to say, we just consume goods in the context of mass production and consumption. This behavior, so called consumerism, started in the early 20th century and reached its culmination in the form of multinational corporations (MNCs) in a mid-20th century. These companies owned everything regarding the product development process. For instance, they controlled money, facilities, information and professional workers. These professionals were enclosed in departments of MNCs, such as styling, marketing, advertising, production, and R&D. The process of streamlined product development in these MNCs is totally top-down, from marketing to distribution to end users. Consumers could not access to the product development process and were only supposed to consume goods, even if those goods did not exactly fit their needs. They were even brainwashed through advertising to force fit their behaviors into defined lifestyles. As a result, when consumers buy things, they compromise themselves or choose to be brand enthusiasts. Consumers were under the control of mass-producers to consume goods, as the name “consumer” literally demonstrates.
However, this situation is slowly changing due to paradigm shifts on cultural and social levels. The first paradigm shift was the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW is made up of linked personal computers (PCs) connecting individuals equally. After the introduction of the WWW, those connected individuals, especially enclosed professionals in corporations, immediately started to exchange information on a grassroots level. This movement crystallized in LINUX and the greater concept of open source; Epoch-making, because people could finally choose to get rid of the control of the mass-producer in OS market, Microsoft. Even though the power of Microsoft is still dominant in the market, there is now an alternate choice to Windows.
The next paradigm shift is coming, driven by the shortage of inexpensive energy sources and materials. Mass production and consumption are possible as long as inexpensive energy sources and materials are permanently available. However, the reality shows that the explosion in human population and the shortage of non-renewable materials result in the high cost of energy and materials. In the long human history, we will finally reach the limitation of the tolerance of earth. Sooner or later, the inefficient activities which are normally seen in mass production and consumption will be cut off, such as landfills, frequent model changing, and long distance distribution channels. It is essential to reduce material usage or recycle materials and reduce long distance distribution. We will need to deal with the production of goods on a local scale, and will no longer be able to behave as we do now.
The first two paradigm shifts force us to change our mind-set regarding consuming goods. Consumers will no longer just consume end-goods but participate in the product development process more actively in a same way of open-source development. It is the dusk of top-down product development and the dawn of grass roots product development. Active consumers might give better solutions through innovation and the democratizing of innovation. At the same time, the exhaustion of materials and energy will push us to make goods and tools individually or on a local scale to solve daily life problems. In the future, individuals might need to share knowledge and manufacturing means within a local community to deal with local problems.
We have looked up social and environmental paradigm shifts, but what about the means of manufacturing? Personal CNCs (computer numerical controlling systems) and 3D printing machines, normally owned by big manufactures or institutions, are now available for individuals. These machines are even able to be made in a DIY fashion (do-it-yourself). If the cost of sensors and actuators keep decreasing, those technologies will soon be much cheaper and available for individuals like laptop PCs.
There are ongoing social needs, movements and problems, but the available technologies are already here. The academic world aims to, not research things happening today, but predict the big changes in the future and to propose possible actions for these changes. As a master student of industrial design engineering, I predict the change will be cultural, social and technological in nature. I want to explore how we humans can act on these changes in a practical manner. It requires the involvement of various professions like architecture, nano/neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and anthropology due to the deal with the interdisciplinary issue and form a transdisciplinary study.
5th, Jan, 2010
Delft
Hironori Yoshida
Activist of Democratizing Fabrication
