#designingreality

“... Designing Reality delivers a thought-provoking dialogue with relevance for other emerging technologies as well as digital fabrication. The Gershenfelds engagingly alert us not only to the opportunities that digital fabrication presents but also to the societal and governance challenges that the widespread diffusion of this technology will generate.”

Science, November 20, 2017

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 About the Book     Table of Contents     Introduction     Advance Praise     About the Authors     Resources     Gallery     Errata 


Over the past fifty years, two digital revolutions—in computing and communication—have transformed our world. They have led to unprecedented productivity, generated enormous wealth, and fundamentally altered everyday life. But these revolutions left a great many people behind: today, half of the planet is not connected to the Internet, inequality is on the rise, and issues around privacy, security and civility emerge daily. With more foresight, we could have avoided many of these pitfalls.

We now have another chance. Neil Gershenfeld, Alan Gershenfeld, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld foresee a third and even greater digital revolution in fabrication. The third digital revolution is about much more than 3D printers and hobbyist makers; it's about the convergence of the digital and physical worlds. Drawing on the history of digitization and exploring the frontiers of research, Designing Reality outlines a vision for a future radically transformed by digital fabrication that takes us from community fab labs to personal fabrication to replicators right out of Star Trek that will allow anyone to make (almost) anything.

Accelerating digital fabrication capabilities could enable self-sufficient local communities and global sustainability. But it could also reinforce existing inequality and create new, destabilizing 'fab' divides. We can—and must—proactively shape our societies so digital fabrication will benefit everyone, rather than just the fortunate few. The first two digital revolutions caught us flatfooted. We can do better this time.

Designing Reality is your guide to not just surviving but thriving in the third digital revolution.


Topics Explored in Designing Reality

Technology

  • Why 'digital' is a good candidate for the word that is both most widely used and most widely misunderstood.

  • How the underlying science of digital applies not just to the first two digital revolutions (communication and computation), but also to the third (fabrication).

  • Why the current hype around 3D printing misses the full range of digital fabrication capabilities in the short-term, and the roadmap for digital fabrication in the long term.

  • A tour of the current global fab ecosystem — how individuals and communities are making everything from clothing, furniture and toys to computers, houses and cars through designs sourced globally and fabricated locally.

  • An introduction to Lass' Law, an analogue to Moore's Law for digital fabrication performance.

  • How digital fabrication can achieve a billion-fold gain in performance and reach by digitizing not just the designs of things but also the construction of the materials that they're made of.

  • How improvements in digital fabrication performance have the potential to democratize manufacturing and change the nature of how we live, learn, work and play.

  • How the third digital revolution challenges a false dichotomy between globalization and localization, allowing bits to travel globally and while atoms stay local.

  • An outline of a fifty-year research roadmap from community fabrication to personal fabrication to universal fabrication to ubiquitous fabrication.

  • How the distinction between animate and automata is becoming increasingly blurred.

Society
  • Why it is essential to provide a social balance to the technology vision.

  • How the first two digital revolutions created deep digital divides, and the risk of even deeper fab divides emerging in the third digital revolution.

  • Why it is essential to begin addressing fab access, literacy and risk mitigation now as the research priorities are being formed and the introduction of the technology into society is still negotiable.

  • How today's social sciences were largely forged in reaction to industrial revolution and why this reactive approach must change in a world of acclerating technologies.

  • The importance of understanding the contrasting rates of change for technology and the rates of change for the individuals, organization and institutions who will shape and be shaped by the technologies.

  • Why Moore's Law is not a law of nature, but a product of social and business choices and why the same will be true with Lass' Law and digital fabrication.

  • Why the third digital revolution will require us to change our conceptions of work and production including those around pay, supervision, ownership, customers, suppliers, and intellectual property.

  • The introduction of a new model for social systems to co-evolve with accelerating technologies, by anticipating rates of change, aligning stakeholders and cultivating transformative ecosystems through an emergent blend of people, platforms and processes.

  • How creating mental maps for the future of digital fabrication that are both aspirational and achievable, combined with stable steps for realizing this future, will enable us to shape the technology before it shapes us in ways we will regret.

  • When the distinction between animate and automata becomes blurred, why the social sciences and humanities must become more focused.

  • The benefits of combining the perspectives of science, social science and the humanities when shaping the third digital revolution.