Having Fun with It

In my many posts on the Real, Serious Economics of Personal Fabrication I’ve kind of ignored a big part of what’s going to make personal fabrication grow tremendously this decade.  (Already happening– Ponoko’s USA office is getting orders hand over fist in THIS economy!)  The thing I’m talking about– and the thing which I think is responsible for Ponoko’s success, is how much FUN it is.

Designing something and then having it is very core to the human experience.  We care about making things.  And digital fabrication is making it easier to design things that really will work when we put them together.

I think a part of the Singer Problem, the list of reasons why sewing machines aren’t presently everywhere, is that feeling we have that we won’t be able to actually make things we’ll like.  Starting up with a sewing machine means a pretty big investment in time and money just to *find out* if we’ll be able to make something we’ll like.  Digital fabrication softens that blow.  It softens it by enabling companies like Ponoko and Shapeways to let users try fabbing systems once without owning a White Elephant of a system if they don’t like the results.  It softens it by making fabrication more automatic and thus, less dependant on muscle memory and other things that take a long time to train up.  It softens it by transforming the skill into software, letting incremental understanding turn into real understanding as users first fab things wholly designed by others, then things they tweaked, and finally things they created.

Digital fabrication might have a big impact on the future as much because of how much fun it is as because it is useful.