Prof Gershenfeld, wildly passionate about machines, emphasised that we’ve won the digital revolution and it’s time to declare success and move on! “We’re just at the edge of a digital revolution in fabrication. It’s not about computers controlling a tool, computers are the tool… a thing can make a thing can make a thing.”
This is DNA with error correcting codes – creating organisms from scratch. Computers where the bits are chemical bubbles: at the very time you are computing, you can be building and synthesizing.
This he says, has meaning in that computation and digital fabrication are completely merged – a research roadmap that is leading us 20 years into the future… to the Star Trek replicator!
In fact, it’s the era of the killer application for a market of one. He demonstrated various innovations made by students for their or someone else’s particular needs, such as a bag that stores your frustrated screams in a public place, like Home Affairs or the Post Office, which you can then let out in private later; a web browser to keep parrots amused while you are at work, and an alarm clock that you wrestle with to prove you’re up!
“What these students were showing was that the killer application for digital fabrication was not to make mass market products, but products for a market of one,” explains Prof Gershenfeld.
His greatest passion right now is innovation with a conscience, the ‘Fab Labs’ that are changing the world. Fab Labs started as an outreach programme by MIT to give people machines and tools to do things with, representing what was best used in the lab, but not the latest and greatest machinery, but still useful - tools that let you create modern technology. They have now spread all around the world, including Shoshonguve near Pretoria, assisting with empowerment and education, leading to problem-solving, job creation and invention. You’ve got kids making robotic vacuum cleaners and other intricate parts for various inventions which have surpassed all technological expectations.
These labs, which weren’t supposed to be useful, have become centres of learning and invention.
“The real consequence of digital fabrication is to personalise it, so technology becomes a bottom-up process and not a top-down process… Problem is that it breaks down everyone’s boundaries and organisations.
Something tremendous is happening in South Africa. Fab Labs are being rolled out with a team from CSIR, MIT and university and NGO partners across SA. The common denominator is an area where a Government project wasn’t working so well.
These centres for invention will be creating wireless networks, solar-powered steam turbines, snap fit structures in housing, etc. “We are giving people the modern means for invention, even using technology for crafts.”
It’s actually an intellectual pyramid scheme, Prof Gershenfeld quipped.
What is being done in South Africa is leading the world in invention discovery, he emphasised, which is great to hear.
