Worth a Look: Makers – The New Industrial Evolution

Manufacturing, Worth A Look
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Wired magazine editor and bestselling author Chris Anderson takes you to the front lines of a new industrial revolution as today’s entrepreneurs, using open source design and 3-D printing, bring manufacturing to the desktop.  In an age of custom-fabricated, do-it-yourself product design and creation, the collective potential of a million garage tinkerers and enthusiasts is about to be unleashed, driving a resurgence of American manufacturing.  A generation of “Makers” using the Web’s innovation model will help drive the next big wave in the global economy, as the new technologies of digital design and rapid prototyping gives everyone the power to invent — creating “the long tail of things”.

Worth a Look: Open Source Ecology

Access, Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Design, Economics/True Cost, Hardware, Innovation, Knowledge, Manufacturing, Resilience, Science
Click for Wiki
Click for Wiki

Open Source Ecology is accelerating the growth of the next economy – the Open Source Economy – an economy that optimizes both production and distribution – while promoting environmental regeneration and social justice. We are building the Global Village Construction Set. This is a high-performance, modular, do-it-yourself, low-cost platform – that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes – to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

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Jean Lievens: The Unionization of Digital Workers — Next Big Thing?

Access, Culture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Manufacturing, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Sources (Info/Intel)
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Phi Beta Iota: Brother Jean has pointed to a Financial Times article for which payment is demanded, good-bye Financial Times. The core material: “Future of work” is a hot topic. Sara Horowitz and Freelancers Union could be indicators of unionization and influence potential. Out of a population of 319 million in the USA, more or less, 53 million are said to be working as free lancers. The future of work, as Richard Wolff has now realized, is dependent on the future of democracy — without electoral reform we cannot bring democracy into the workplace. The future of work — if it is to be characterized by prosperity for all and peace across Earth — demands holistic analytics, true cost economics, and open source everything engineering. Root, however, is OpenPower — Electoral Reform.

 

 

Jean Lievens: Forget Sharing — Go Circular Economy

Architecture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Manufacturing, Materials, Resilience, Science, Transparency
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Forget the ‘sharing economy': technology is about to usher in the ‘circular' economy

A ‘circular supply chain’ using technology can achieve sustainable production and business growth

An open, networked business-to-business platform that connects entire supply chains can serve as the enabler for progressive enterprises with the foresight to seize the opportunity.

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Antechinus: 50 Cent Folding Microscope

Innovation, Manufacturing
Antechinus
Antechinus

A 50-cent microscope that folds like origami

Perhaps you’ve punched out a paper doll or folded an origami swan? TED Fellow Manu Prakash and his team have created a microscope made of paper that's just as easy to fold and use. A sparkling demo that shows how this invention could revolutionize healthcare in developing countries … and turn almost anything into a fun, hands-on science experiment.