In the presidential debates this year, Brokaw asked a telling question: Would our economic, environmental, and energy challenges best be solved by “funding a Manhattan-style project or by funding 100,000 garages across America to encourage the kind of industry and innovation that developed Silicon Valley ?”
100kGarage Community
Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make Magazine, was one of several observers picking up on the garage challenge:
"So, a lot is going to depend on people working in 100,000 or more
garages, probably with little funding or support ... We're looking
specifically for technologies that can be shared and replicated around
the world. We're looking for projects that make a real difference and
can help us create or cope with the necessary changes. Our goal is to
find some of those industrious, ingenious Makers at work in garages
everywhere."
Many of us pondered what WE might do in one of those 100,000
garages, recognizing that the answer for many of today's current
challenges can be found distributed in our own innovation, creativity,
and productivity. The idea, then, is to bring together those who need
to get things made - be it innovators, designers, or just
regular folks looking for new solutions or new stuff - with “Fabbers”
who have the technology tools for production.
Although traditional manufacturing ... large factories and corporations
... sometimes seem like the most practical and efficient way to produce
things, the "digital revolution" has opened our eyes to all kinds of
new ways of doing things. The internet lets us reach almost anyone,
especially if we have something of interest to offer. New digital
fabrication tools allow us to efficiently make things that would have
just a few years ago been at best difficult, and most likely
impossible, using traditional tools and methods. [About
Digital Fabrication]
As we all are becoming environmentally aware, we realize that our
environment just can't handle transporting all our raw materials across
the country or around the world, just to ship them back as finished
products. These new technologies make practical and possible doing more
of our production and manufacturing in small distributed facilities, as
small as our garages, and close to where the product is needed. Most
importantly our new methods for collaboration and sharing means that we
don't have to do it all by ourselves ... that designers with creative
ideas but without the capability to see their designs become real can
work with fabricators that might not have the design skills that they
need but do have the equipment and the skills and orientation that's
needed to turn ideas into reality … that those who just want to get
stuff made or get their ideas realized can work with the
Makers/designers who can help them create the plans and the local
fabricators who fulfill them.
To get this started ShopBot Tools, Makers of popular tools for digital
fabrication and Ponoko, who are reinventing how goods are
designed, made and distributed, are teaming-up to create a network of
workshops and designers, with resources and infrastructure to help
facilitate “rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.” Using grass
roots enterprise and ingenuity this community can help get us back in
action, whether it's to modernize school buildings and infrastructure,
develop energy-saving alternatives, or simply produce great new
products for our homes and businesses.
There are thousands of ShopBot digital-fabrication (CNC) tools in
garages and small shops across the country, ready to locally fabricate
the components needed to address our energy and environmental
challenges and to locally produce items needed to enhance daily living,
work, and business. Ponoko's web methodologies offer people who
want to get things made an environment that integrates designers and
inventors with ShopBot fabricators. Multiple paths for getting from
idea to object, part, component, or product are possible in a dynamic
network like this, where ideas can be realized in immediate distributed
production and where production activities can provide feedback to
improve designs.
It may sound a bit complicated at first but our idea is to be as
open and unconstrained as possible, while also making it possible to
get stuff done easily. We don't want to force fabricators or designers
into a particular framework and will allow each a range of options for
participation. We expect that the system and methods here will
continuously evolve as we learn about what works best. There will be
opportunities for feedback and interaction in the forums and we
encourage everyone to participate.
The form of distributed production or distributed manufacturing that
100Kgarages opens up would not be possible without the technology of
digital fabrication. Digital fabrication allows a precise design to be
created using computer software and then passed to another computer
that is attached to a digital fabrication tool. The digital fabrication
tools used here are a form of subtractive 3D printer (know as CNC
tools). They are capable of producing the 3D design with high precision
and detail. This fidelity to the design means that the parts or
componets are cut, drilled, or machined exactly as expected and exactly
the same each time.