Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

The biggest transformation is not in the way things are done, but in who’s doing it.

As Marx observed, power belongs to those who control the means of production.

West is in the midst of a job crisis. Much of what economic growth the developed world can summon these days comes from improving productivity, which is driven by getting more output per worker. That’s great, but the economic consequence is that if you can do the same or more work with fewer employees, you should.

This ability—to manufacture “local or global” at will—is a huge advantage. That simple menu option compresses three centuries of industrial revolution into a single mouse click.

Bits are thrilling, but when it comes to the overall economy, it’s all about atoms.

The Web Age has liberated bits; they are cheaply created and travel cheaply, too. This is fantastic; the weightless economics of bits has reshaped everything from culture to economics. It is perhaps the defining characteristic of the twenty-first century

The beauty of the Web is that it democratized the tools both of invention and of production.

Computers amplify human potential: they not only give people the power to create but can also spread their ideas quickly, creating communities, markets, even movements.

Thus ideas, shared, turn into bigger ideas. Projects, shared, become group projects and more ambitious than any one person would attempt alone. And those projects can become the seeds of products, movements, even industries.