POTUS: Neo-Industrial “Maker”
President Obama shone a very-bright spotlight on Additive Manufacturing—aka “3D Printing” (3DP)—in his recent State of the Union address to Congress and the Nation. POTUS obviously sees 3DP—as do many of us—as a sea-change technology. Additive fabrication will probably affect every manufacturer in the U.S. While, likely, creating many more factories than there are now…as a proactive engine of re-shoring and production repatriation.
President Obama Speaks About U.S. 3D Printing Opportunities During His 2013 State of the Union Address
Now, there is an important trick to a society’s dealing with—or, better, welcoming of—all disruptive technologies. That trick is to assure that the attendant “techreative” change is worth its very-real impact in every neighborhood affected.
Creative Destruction Vs. Commonweal Development
With the prospective 3DP tectonic shifts, the commercial build-up, new business launches and broader community development must far outweigh the social, political and economic debris of creative destruction. Widely enjoyed wealth generation and commonweal value must over-balance the creative destruction wrought on the economy (and individuals!) in the process of rapid manufacturing make-over.
3DP Goal: For every low-paying factory job 3DP disrupts, two better-paying 3DP ecosystem jobs deploy.
Maker Hangout: 3DP Players Trade Creator Concepts (Video & Commentary)
Now, President Obama has followed up his presidential SOTU impetus with a White House-based outreach to 3DP industry players and maker-community personalities. This event—”White House Hangout: The Maker Movement“—took place online yesterday afternoon [Thursday, 28 March 2013]. It was Web-conference MC’d—appropriately—by Tom Kalil, White House Innovation Advisor.
White House Innovation Advisor Tom Kalil MC’s the Online “Hangout” Conference Entitled “The Maker’s Movement”
Tom was refreshing in his ability to elicit others’ ideas, welcome both effusive and efface-ive personalities and—simply—listen with unfeigned interest.
The five Google+ Hangout participants were thought-leaders, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts from around the country. Besides Tom Kalil, they were:
- Super Awesome Sylvia (11-year-old), creator of the Super Awesome Maker Show;
- Dale Dougherty, founder of MAKE Magazine and creator of Maker Faire;
- Tara Tiger Brown, co-founder and executive director at LA Makerspace;
- Saul Griffith, co-founder of Otherlab; and
- Venkatesh Prasad, Ford technical leader.
White House Blogger (Ms. Kori Shulman) for this segment described the Hangout thusly: “…participants discussed the elements of an ‘all hands on deck’ effort to elevate Making and also share their ideas on how we can get more young people interested in STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math).”
Here is the Hangout video itself—embedded at the start of a Forbes Magazine commentary on the event and the Maker Movement.
These on-screen Hangout participants were representative of people—all over American—who are making 3DP disruptive technology their basis for a whole new Maker or e-Manufacturing ecosystem. I’m confident you’ll find this 48-minute exchange is worth every minute. Fascinating…
Young Maker’s Project: Water-Color Robot Prints White House Logo Realtime During White House Hangout for Maker’s Movement
A 3DP Industrial-Segment Cluster In NYC: Our World-Beating Moment
Dear Readers, as you can probably discern from recent posts here, I’m a champion of 3DP as DIY industrial policy—be it top down or bottom up.
So far, our self-empowering citizen Makers are way ahead of our governments’ econ-dev policy Makers.
This is likely a gladsome artifact of the technology and the times—3DP captures our Zeitgeist with its hand-made yet tech empowerment. A perfect meld for Techreatives.
Our City already hosts two of the most important 3DP companies in the world: Shapeways (Manhattan & Queens) and MakerBot (Brooklyn). We’re ahead of the global curve in grasping and exploiting 3DP tech. And, I believe we should take advantage of this wondrous (and hard-earned) fact—for the betterment of our City, State and Nation.
We—citizens of New York City—need to foster our planet’s biggest and best industrial-segment cluster here in the five Boroughs. This 3DP Cluster should be self-actuating and self-supportive. Our innovative Cluster should include an ecosystem of skilled people and companies, educational institutions and non-profits, governments and marketplaces, startups and customers, communities and Maker children.
AND, we need to “make” it NOW!
I’d like to know what YOU think about an overarching effort to integrate 3DP top-down with bottom-up here in Gotham. Think of it as DIY effort to make our City the center of 3DP commonweal innovation and social/soft industrialization for the world. Leave YOUR comment…
C’mon Back!
LAND
Reposted from http://landgrant.co, March 29, 2013
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