Interesting article by Andrew Belonsky on "MakerBot Industries," a Brooklyn-based company that is a manufacturer of open-source 3-D printers. Three dimensional printers? 3-D printers are "machines that use hot plates and malleable materials, such as plastic, to manufacture three-dimensional representations of a design. This is done by layering materials atop one another, shaped by moving parts, such as robotic arms, to form a solid mold."
The Brooklyn-based first started as "a hobby for Bre Pettis and co-founders Adam Mayer and Zach Smith. The men wanted a 3-D printer of their own, and employed their respective engineering backgrounds — Pettis helped create the NYC-based hacker space NYC Resistor, Smith worked in robotics and Mayer in programming — to make their dream a reality. And with their machine’s completion, the men realized what they had to do: deliver MakerBot to the masses."
"MakerBot, a “rapid prototyping machine” whose “Cupcake” model starts at $750, remains one of the most affordable 3-D printers on the market. You simply need to buy the machine, upload your designs to their computer, and set it to print, a process MakerBot accomplishes by heating plasticine materials, like high-density polyethylene, and molding them into the desired shape."
Andrew Belonsky's full article on "Manufacturing the Future" from ScribeMedia here
MakerBot's website here . While, to DITHOB, MakerBot appears to be part of an emerging transmedia culture, a form of storytelling where content becomes invasive and fully permeates the audience's lifestyle, on any of a variety of media, and even emerging into the physical world, it also offers extremely functional, future-is-now manufacturing potential: One commenter noted that a visitor's car key was broken and the MakerBot was used to actually reproduce a replacement car key right on the spot. A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme (Bruno Giussani, TED), something that the 3-D printer can readily do by giving sculptural physicality to images, as opposed to our current digital society where much of a "new reality" exists as diaphonous electronic images on screens of various sizes .
To see a MakerBot 3-D printer in action; check out the video here
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Jerry Brown: Zen Mind, Government Mind, and the Tao of Budget Deficits
From the Opinionator column in the N.Y. Times, Timothy Egan writes about Governor-elect Jerry Brown, who, after triumphing over a GOP candidate who spent a record amount of personal wealth only to lose, and the daunting challenge Brown faces to turnaround the huge budget deficits that threaten the Great State of California, and how the "Zen Mind" and senior citizen status of this quintessential California politician may be just the ticket to accomplish that:
"During the greed-is-good era of the late 1980s, Brown found himself ministering to the sick and dying at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta."
"...Also, unlike Schwarzenegger, Brown is not dyeing what little hair he has left or pumping up his pecs to impress the babes. California needs someone to act his age, and Brown has settled into his senior years without illusions."
“We need someone with insider’s knowledge,” Brown said, with Zen clarity, “but an outsider’s mind.”
Full article by Timothy Egan here
"During the greed-is-good era of the late 1980s, Brown found himself ministering to the sick and dying at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta."
“We need someone with insider’s knowledge,” Brown said, with Zen clarity, “but an outsider’s mind.”
Full article by Timothy Egan here