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is much less “magical” and the issues surrounding it map to some of the major
concerns of today's Maker communities: how does the technology subvert or reify
existing industrial infrastructures (and the systems of power that rely on them)?
How can intellectual property law stretch to deal with the rapid growth of open-
source hardware and software movements and the decentralization of manufactur-
ing? These are questions that we have asked in some detail in some of our previous
work (Tanenbaum et al.
2013a
), and so we will not get into in detail here. In
Makers
,
Doctorow explores these types of political questions by envisioning shantytowns
that emerge in response to the slow economic collapse of the USA. These ad hoc
communities become natural allies for Perry and Lester and the other fringe makers
of the New Work movement, so when the one near their workspace is burned down,
they invite the residents to rebuild inside their abandoned factory workspace.
The squatter village was a shantytown, but it was no slum. It was a neighborhood that could
be improved. And the boys are doing that: having relocated the village to their grounds,
they're inventing and remixing new techniques for building cheap and homey shelter fast
(Doctorow
2009
, p. 84).
The result is an unregulated community in which invention and innovation are
put to work solving immediate local problems, like housing and transportation,
without reliance on larger industrial infrastructures.
11.4
Analysis
Each of the four design fi ctions we have considered takes a different perspective on
the nature of fabrication technology, and each results in a very different view of the
future. The ways in which these scenarios converge and diverge refl ect broadly how
the future of fabrication has been imagined. Of critical importance is the underlying
structural mechanics of the technology that each scenario envisions:
Star Trek
materializes objects and food from energy templates, which are freely
available to all.
Transmetropolitan
uses home appliances to break down garbage and “base
blocks” into raw materials which are recombined into goods.
The Diamond Age
envisions a “server
client” relationship in which raw
materials (refi ned atoms) are distributed to remote fabrication terminals.
→
Makers
envisions slightly more advanced 3D printers, combined with home
automation technologies.
These different approaches mean that each scenario has a different set of dynam-
ics in place, in terms of the relationship between raw materials and manufactured
goods, in terms of production and distribution, and in terms of the economics of
fabrication. The infrastructures of
The Diamond Age
parallel our current industrial
