Imagine having to wrestle your alarm clock in the morning to prove you’re awake. If I had one of those in 1981, I would have missed FAR FEWER BioChem classes in college! Well, a student at MIT made such a device. I didn’t say design one … I said made one.

Neil Gershenfeld, the director for the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT has been on the leading edge of a manufacturing revolution. One where you and I (or, more likely, our kids) will be able to manufacture just about anything they want as simply as pushing the print button on their computer. Using nanobeam laser writers and supersonic waterjet cutters, the Center’s lab can crank out itsy-bitsy things like semiconductors to large scale objects …€” like buildings …€” all without having to send off plans to an overseas manufacturing plant. This isn’t just another MIT geek-fest. There are 15 such labs around the globe. In Ghana, an 8 year old girl made a working circuit board. In Norway, a 14 year old boy created a robot car. This movement is just starting to roll.

Talk about an individual’s ability to control their needs, ideas and their world! It’s like Moore’s law being applied to manufacturing.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 7:02 am and is filed under The Junk Drawer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.