Fab Market

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= "All products are open-source and sold ready for use, assembly or fabrication".

URL = http://market.fablabs.io/manifesto/

Description

"The Fab Lab Network intends to educate society about making almost anything we need. Using digital fabrication as its main focus, the network promotes the idea of distributed manufacturing. With this model, designs can be sent to the other side of the planet, modified and made on the same day.

Using good design, CNC machines, laser cutters, 3D printers and other simple tools, we can create nearly any object, big or small, comparable to mass products on the market. Today the network is approaching 1000 labs globally.

The Fab Market is a new online shop where you can find a variety of locally made products designed by people from all over the world. All products are open-source and sold ready for use, assembly or fabrication, giving people the possibility to participate in the making process. The more you participate, the less you pay for the product." (http://market.fablabs.io/manifesto/)


Discussion

Eric Hunting:

"This was a great article and FabMarket is a great idea. My only complaint is with the "we don't want things that look like this" picture on the web site. Seems a little persnickety to me. Sure, one doesn't want things that seem makeshift or too 'gingery' (referring to the legendary David J. Gingery) for a domestic environment, but I see nothing wrong with the vernacular aesthetics of digital fabrication. It's part of the new aesthetic of a Post-Industrial culture. But that's a matter taste, I suppose.

What I think this concept needs, however, is to be backed up with a lifestyle showcase. A visual exposition of the kind of habitat and lifestyle this new production paradigm can offer. How else would the general public 'get it'? It's otherwise rather abstract. There is a vast collection of open designs scattered randomly across the Internet that could comprise a model of a functional, comfortable, standard of living. But people aren't aware of that possibility because this stuff is so scattered. Making a central market of sorts can ultimately help in this, creating the gravitas to draw all this design information into a common place with standard forms for its presentation and 'spime' data. But that's not so new. There have already been a number of attempts to create things like FabMarket that didn't get to critical mass. Waiting for the designs to come to you may be a long wait. These days a web site is a note in a bottle tossed into a heavily littered ocean. Is there a way to help actively catalyze this critical mass?

This is part of my reasoning behind the video documentary project Open House ( http://www.appropedia.org/Open_House:_Building_an_Open... ) that I started exploring last year. I've long been interested in the notion of applying the approach of 'living museums' to lifestyles of the future. So it occurred to me that one could use a homebuilding project, and the approach of home improvement shows, as a way to collect and present a 'package' of open designs for a functional lifestyle and use that as a vehicle to present the various concepts, places, and personalities of emergent Post-Industrial culture. The new culture has its own aesthetic. Why not leverage the novelty of that? So far, though, people like the concept but don't seem inspired to help pursue it. These days I have my own chronic problem of getting things to critical mass..." (Facebook, January 2017)