Weblog Consulting Register Login Subscribe to Free Influx Emails Join our Facebook Group Branding Street Cred Technology Lifestyle Style Entertainment Interviews Art InfluxTV Map Widgets RSS — All Subjects RSS — More Feeds

Search

Advanced Search

Contact Privacy Policy

The trend of creativity and customization has been much discussed to death by everyone including Influx. However, Neil Gershenfeld of MIT added a different twist to the story with his presentation at PopTech. Gershenfeld and his team have been working on the idea of personal fabrication and through trial and experiment had created a working personal fabrication laboratory for $20,000.

He was extremely surprised that 100s of students wanted to join what he thought was a geeky class. Instead he found people who really wanted to play a creative role in creating their own products. He traced the problem back to the Renaissance, where making things was pushed aside as a non-intellectual and therefore non-worthy pursuit.

In these labs, students could experiment and make their own things that in many case served no real practical application other than self-expression.

This technology is so radical that it hints at a very different future for the relationship between corporations and consumers. Today, we are playing with the illusion of personalization. It's likely that in the next 10-20 years, personalized fabricators (decedents of laser printers) will produce things for us. Whether we chose to craft these products ourselves or to print out company versions will be entirely up to us. Some may be made in the home, others might be made for us at places like Kinko's. The scenario that you could be picking up the jeans you designed this morning, this afternoon from Kinko's, suggests a substantial transformation of business practice.

Companies are very happy to give consumers power to customize their brands, but when individuals have the power and technology to circumvent companies and making their own products, they are likely to remain so content.

There is potentially a mid-point here that doesn't rely on the personal fabricators; instead Chinese manufacturers could allow consumers to tap into their production facilities to produce their own anything. Imagine an online superstore where you can chose any product category and order a customized version of it. There's no reason brands could not be involved in this store allowing consumers to get exactly the right product to meet their needs, even toothpaste and washing powder.