Invention Kits Let you Build (Almost) Anything

FYI,

This type of technology will be invaluable for insitu space
development and colonization.

"Invention Kits Let you Build (Almost) Anything - Creator: Fab Lab
helps people get means to create their own technology
MSNBC

: Give a man a gadget, and you feed his tech needs for a day. Teach
: him to make gadgets, and he can feed himself and a few savvy
: venture capitalists for life.

: Such is the thinking of Neil Gershenfeld, a 48-year-old physicist
: and MIT professor and the inventor of what he calls the Fab Lab. A
: Fab Lab (short for fabrication laboratory) is a package of tools
: designed to make essentially any object.

: The kits can include a laser cutter, computer-controlled wood
: router and a miniature mill for drilling circuit boards, all for
: around $50,000, including open-source software, batteries and
: micro-controllers.

: Those appliances and materials, Gershenfeld says, are all anyone
: needs to build whatever he or she can imagine: panels for roofing a
: house, a simple computer or a better mouse trap. "Basically, the
: goal is to create a 'Star Trek'-style replicator in 20 years,"
: Gershenfeld says matter-of-factly.

: For now, Gershenfeld's project is focused on bringing an early
: version of that replicator to the masses: He's shipped 26 Fab Labs
: around the world since 2002. Shepherds in Norway have used a Fab
: Lab to create radio-frequency ID tags for tracking wandering
: sheep.

: The South African government is working with Sun Microsystems and
: Cisco on building simple Internet-connected computers that hook up
: to televisions and cost just $10 each.

: For ordinary people

: The latest Fab Lab was shipped to Afghanistan in June, where it
: will fashion customized prosthetic limbs. Gershenfeld says he
: receives a lab request every day.

: "The Fab Labs tap into this wellspring of interest from ordinary
: people in getting the means to create their own technology," says
: Gershenfeld.

: But for all that emphasis on self-sufficiency, Fab Labs have so far
: been oddly dependent on charity the project has been fueled by
: about $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation
: along with money from local non-profits and governments.

: That's why Gershenfeld has been searching for a way to make his Fab
: Lab network self-sustaining. His newly evolved answer is the Fab
: Fund, a for-profit project launched a year ago by Gershenfeld's
: brother Alan and fellow venture capitalist Michael Angst.

: The Fab Fund is a test of what its founders call "micro-venture
: capitalism." Its capital, currently around $200,000, will be
: invested in for-profit businesses that manufacture their products
: in Fab Labs around the world. Each Fab Lab, instead of building
: just what its owners design, can earn its keep by spending a few
: hours building someone else's Fab-Fund-sponsored product.

: The Fund's first investment is in a company that will sell a toy
: called GIK, or "Great Invention Kit," a system of cardboard cut-out
: panels that range from a size used to assemble miniature figures to
: a scale large enough to build forts.

: A first round of GIK, which Gershenfeld's own children invented in
: their family's Fab Lab, is currently being cut in a lab in the
: South Bronx. Eventually, GIK designs will be customized online by
: kids around the world and sent to any Fab Lab that has a few hours'
: downtime or even better, a lab near a customer's home, to lower
: shipping costs.

: Aside from GIK, the Fab Fund has received proposals from businesses
: pitching gadgets that range from clothing accessories to super-
: cheap, long-range antennas to an attachment that converts a
: cellphone to a remote control. All hope to use a Fab Lab's spare
: hours to either prototype their products or build small, customized
: batches.

: The goal, Gershenfeld says, is to show that distributed
: manufacturing can turn a profit. Eventually, he hopes many funds
: will throw their capital into the Fab Labs ecosystem.

: Replicating Fab Labs

: For Gershenfeld, self-sustaining fabrication is the culmination of
: decades of obsession with the culture of DIY. As a child, the
: curly-haired engineer spent hours building his own music
: synthesizer and calculator, sitting for hours in front of an
: oscilloscope, trying to understand the minutiae of circuitry.

: Gershenfeld's techno-lust continued into his college years, where
: he lamented that his time was spent on mere academia, while
: hands-on building was left to trade schools. "I couldn't understand
: why an interest in making things was taken as a sign of lesser
: intelligence," he wrote in his 2005 book "Fab."

: Since 1998, he's been working to bridge that gap between learning
: and making, teaching a class at MIT called "How to Make (Almost)
: Anything." He's also founding a global degree program, the
: so-called Fab Academy, that certifies students in Fab-style
: building from digital designs.

: But there's an even more ambitious element of Gershenfeld's plan to
: spread DIY around the world in small, self-sustaining workshops. He
: and his MIT team are working on building a Fab Lab that can itself
: build every element of a Fab Lab: In other words, a Fab Lab that
: can reproduce.

: They've already used a Fab Lab to build working prototypes of a
: laser cutter and the computer equipment used for design projects.

: That means that in decades to come, Gershenfeld hopes not just to
: have created the "'Star Trek' replicator" that he dreams of, but
: replicators that replicate themselves, spreading around the world
: in a massive, self-perpetuating, self-funded network.

: "If anyone can make anything, anywhere," Gershenfeld says, "It
: fundamentally changes the meaning of business."

Mark Reiff