View source for Comparing the Industrial Revolution to the Personal Manufacturing Industrial Revolution



=Table=

Source: [[Factory@Home]] report, pp. 40 [http://web.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/FactoryAtHome.pdf]

{| border="1" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" 
!
!Industrial revolution
!Personal manufacturing “evolution”
|----
!Communications
|Telegraph, telephone, improved commercial printing technologies
|Internet, online shopping, online user communities, search and rank algorithms that enable users to find what they’re looking for in the chaos, online blueprints
|----
!Power
|Steam, coal, electricity
|Powerful computing technologies bring formerly industrial-scale design and analytical capabilities to the masses
|----
!Machine technology
|Steam engines, coal burning machines, looms, automated agricultural technologies.

Factory-scale machines mass produced standardized objects very quickly
|Personal fabrication machines are ready for home use, outside the factory. 

Cheaper and easier CAD software Hardware and electronic components get smaller and cheaper and more powerful
|----
!Distribution infrastructure
|Rail ways, improved roads, the postal system
|The Internet becomes the distribution infrastructure. 

Fabbers are local so no distribution or inventory is needed
|----
!Consumers
|Emerging consumer markets eagerly purchased lower-cost mass produced items
|Today’s consumers want to be unique and express themselves with custom objects
|----
!Labor
|Unskilled labor could assemble objects on an assembly line
|Unskilled consumers, like unskilled computer users, can design and operate their own manufacturing machinery
|----
|}



[[Category:Graphics]]

[[Category:Manufacturing]]