Download A New Industrial Revolution.

The world maybe on the verge of a change in manufacturing as profound as the industrial revolution and most people don’t see the change coming.
The change is the switch to small scale production controlled by individuals from large scale production controlled by huge organizations. The change is being driven by technology especially the advances in electronics in recent decades. Basically new technologies make it possible for individuals to carry out the kind of production that once required a large factory.
The best example of this is the publishing and printing industry. Forty or fifty years ago if you wanted to publish books you needed a fully equipped factory a printing shop with a press, cutting equipment and binding equipment. Of course you would have also needed to lay the book out by hand and have some method of transferring the printed material to a plate to print it. In other words you needed several dozen people to layout, print and bind a book.
Today two people can create a pamphlet using computers and a modern printer. One person can write the book and lay it out on the printer. A second person can then run the machine that prints and binds it.
Book printing has gotten so easy that Amazon createspace allows any literate person to get a published. The author creates the book electronically and sends it to Amazon. Then Amazon makes the book available on its website if anybody is willing to buy the book Amazon will print up a copy and send it to them.
The revolution that’s hit printing is about to hit manufacturing as well. Machines call three printers now use computer controlled laser cutting and machining to create metal and plastic components. Some of these even create full sized plastic models of objects.
This means that it will soon be possible for a few people with access to these machines to manufacture all the parts they need to make a machine say a car, then build it themselves. Just as anybody can now be their own printer with a copier, anybody can be their factory with three D printers.
One possibility with this technology will be that if you need a simple tool you’ll just program a machine to make it the way we now print off a web page or make a copy. It’s entirely possible that we’ll have tool copiers that’ll scan tools then make copies of them.
This technology will mean that patents will be worthless because anybody with access to copiers will be able to duplicate most objects. It’ll also have profound effects on the economy, why spend millions to manufacture and ship tools when you can copy them. Factories could go out of business, so could shippers and retailers.
This will mean an entirely new economy because instead of a few large factories producing goods, hundreds perhaps thousands of small entrepreneurs could start manufacturing tools or other items. Instead of waiting years for a new piece of technology they could just download the design from the web and have their printer make one. Say a new cell phone or silver ware.
This means that manufacturers could be hit by the crisis now plaguing music and videos. Instead of buying CDs, DVDs or vinyl people are simply downloading movies and songs directly. It’s also possible to download books either as an electronic e-book or as a quickly printed paper book. Sooner or later there will be stores where you can walk in and order any book and have it printed up in a few minutes.
In a couple of decades people could also download tools or electronic devices like cell phones. That is they’d download the plans then have the copier make them one. That of course will change our world and our economy as profoundly as the industrial revolution did.