Φοβερη πρωτοβουλια. Μακαρι να υπαρξει στο μελλον κατι τετοιο και στα μερη μας, θα περναγα εκει την μιση μου μέρα. Σορρυ αλλα δεν υπαρχει στα ελληνικα. Προερχεται απο ακαδημαικη μελετη περιπτωσης.
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Rural Fab Labs: Reaping the Benefits of the Digital Revolution and Open Source
Peter Troxler, Dr. sc. techn.
Square One Dr Peter Troxler, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The ongoing digital revolution makes technology more easily available; the parallel release of intangible good such as information and creative works from the restraints of intellectual property “protection” is the driver behind increasing innovation and creativity. While urban areas are better positioned to reap the benefits of these developments, the Fab Lab movement allows rural areas to participate as well by structurally linking digital fabrication technology and open access to knowledge, experience, and designs.
With the advent of relatively inexpensive digital fabrication technology, several concepts from the digital realm started to infiltrate the domain of physical goods: Since designs are stored in digital format, they can easily be shared around the globe – be it as control information for fabrication, be it as shared artifacts in a distributed co-creation process, be it as a basis and source of inspiration for new, derived designs. The successful application of open source practices in software and creative production slowly but gradually replaces traditional IP protection. What used to be called ‛shared machine shops’ are becoming the incubators of the digital age: Fab Labs, short for fabrication laboratories. As places for making things based on digital designs they reinvigorate local fabrication; as nodes in a global network they facilitate the sharing of designs and manufacturing experience.
Based on an concept developed by Neil Gershenfeld at MIT, FabLab initiatives are typically centerd around workshops equipped with relatively inexpensive, digitally controlled fabrication machines such as laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers. Users produce two- and three-dimensional things that once could only be made using equipment costing hundreds of thousands of Euros. They use digital drawings and open-source software to control the machines; and they build electronic circuits and digital gadgets.
From a handful of Fab Labs in 2004 the network has grown to over fifty active labs with as many in preparation. Some of the labs are part of an educational institution, be it a high school or university, some act as business incubators for inventors and tinkerers, and others have found their place as catalysers for artists, designers and other creative minds.
What makes Fab Labs different from just any shared machine shop is that they explicitly subscribe to a common charter that firmly institutes Fab Labs as a global network of local labs, stipulates open access, and establishes peer learning as a core feature.
The charter requires that ‛designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use’. Beyond that it allows intellectual property protection ‛however you choose’. Even more, the charter explicitly continues that ‛commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs’. Yet it cautions against potential conflict with open access, and encourages business activity to both grow beyond the lab. Successful businesses should give back to the inventors, labs, and networks that contributed to their success.
In Europe, rural adoption of the concept of Fab Labs has been relatively slow compared to urban locations. There are three labs in Iceland and two in Norway. In the alpine region, the Ars Electronica Center, Linz, operates a lab, equipped with a small selection of digital production tools and geared more towards playful learning than local digital manufacturing. The first Fab Lab in Switzerland has just opened in Luzern, and a few more labs are under development in the more urbanized areas of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Munich and Vienna.
One of the early rural Fab Labs in Europe was set up in the Lyngen Alps in northern Norway in 2002 with the support of the municipality, Telenor and MIT, initially to complete the flagship project “Electronic Sheperd” that had been started in 1995 as a local initiative, aiming to create mesh wireless, ad hoc networks to allow shepherds to electronically keep track of their sheep: “[T]he goal is to assist the traditional practice of Sami nomadic herding with nomadic data. Driven by changes in habitat and land use, aims include tracking the animals and their predators, monitoring their health, bringing them down when needed, and providing continuity of information throughout the animal products supply chain. Components of the system include short-range wireless tags for sheep or reindeer, GPS “bell” tags for the lead animals, and tag readers at salt licks inter- faced to a multi-hop 802.11 network.” [1]
More recently, the city of Graz (Austria) hosted the “Pop-up store” as part of a month-long event on design in May 2011. Graz just had been recognized as UNESCO City of Design in March 2011. The “Pop-up store” as a first of its kind: It is the first shop that only offered Open Design goods, products designed by local and international designers and made freely available under a Creative Commons license. The motive for such a license: Fair licensing and open design enables creative participation in the value chain. At the same time it opens designs up for future production, new products on demand, or production in small batches. The products sold at the “Pop-up store” were all produced locally, in Styria. The “Pop-up store” demonstrated, how local producers can be integrated in and benefit from digitally distributed designs. [2]
Fab Labs incorporate an interesting mix of characteristics that might seem contradictory at first, but might well be considered the best practical approximation of what Yochai Benkler describes as commons-based peer production that gives more people more control over their productivity in a self-directed and community-oriented way. More generally, the network approach of Fab Labs empower local labs, particularly in rural regions such as northern Scandinavia or the European Alps, to gain access to knowledge, expertise and creativity that tends to accumulate in more urban. At the same time, the open source principles foster sharing and allow communities to establish sustainable local participation in global value chains where a substantial part of the value created can be captured locally instead of dissipating in global corporations.
References
[1] Gershenfeld, Neil, and Prakash, Manu (2004). Personal communication fabrication in the Lyngen Alps. Telektronikk, 3, pp. 22-26. Available online at http://www.telenor.com/en/resources/images/Page_022-026_tcm28-45289.pdf (accessed 2 February 2011).
[2] Nußmüller, Wolfgang (2011). Pop-up Store: Open Design. woche.at, 13 May 2011. Available at from http://www.woche.at/graz/magazin/pop-up-store-open-design-d41542.html (accessed 13 May 2011).
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Rural Fab Labs: Reaping the Benefits of the Digital Revolution and Open Source
Peter Troxler, Dr. sc. techn.
Square One Dr Peter Troxler, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The ongoing digital revolution makes technology more easily available; the parallel release of intangible good such as information and creative works from the restraints of intellectual property “protection” is the driver behind increasing innovation and creativity. While urban areas are better positioned to reap the benefits of these developments, the Fab Lab movement allows rural areas to participate as well by structurally linking digital fabrication technology and open access to knowledge, experience, and designs.
With the advent of relatively inexpensive digital fabrication technology, several concepts from the digital realm started to infiltrate the domain of physical goods: Since designs are stored in digital format, they can easily be shared around the globe – be it as control information for fabrication, be it as shared artifacts in a distributed co-creation process, be it as a basis and source of inspiration for new, derived designs. The successful application of open source practices in software and creative production slowly but gradually replaces traditional IP protection. What used to be called ‛shared machine shops’ are becoming the incubators of the digital age: Fab Labs, short for fabrication laboratories. As places for making things based on digital designs they reinvigorate local fabrication; as nodes in a global network they facilitate the sharing of designs and manufacturing experience.
Based on an concept developed by Neil Gershenfeld at MIT, FabLab initiatives are typically centerd around workshops equipped with relatively inexpensive, digitally controlled fabrication machines such as laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers. Users produce two- and three-dimensional things that once could only be made using equipment costing hundreds of thousands of Euros. They use digital drawings and open-source software to control the machines; and they build electronic circuits and digital gadgets.
From a handful of Fab Labs in 2004 the network has grown to over fifty active labs with as many in preparation. Some of the labs are part of an educational institution, be it a high school or university, some act as business incubators for inventors and tinkerers, and others have found their place as catalysers for artists, designers and other creative minds.
What makes Fab Labs different from just any shared machine shop is that they explicitly subscribe to a common charter that firmly institutes Fab Labs as a global network of local labs, stipulates open access, and establishes peer learning as a core feature.
The charter requires that ‛designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use’. Beyond that it allows intellectual property protection ‛however you choose’. Even more, the charter explicitly continues that ‛commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs’. Yet it cautions against potential conflict with open access, and encourages business activity to both grow beyond the lab. Successful businesses should give back to the inventors, labs, and networks that contributed to their success.
In Europe, rural adoption of the concept of Fab Labs has been relatively slow compared to urban locations. There are three labs in Iceland and two in Norway. In the alpine region, the Ars Electronica Center, Linz, operates a lab, equipped with a small selection of digital production tools and geared more towards playful learning than local digital manufacturing. The first Fab Lab in Switzerland has just opened in Luzern, and a few more labs are under development in the more urbanized areas of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Munich and Vienna.
One of the early rural Fab Labs in Europe was set up in the Lyngen Alps in northern Norway in 2002 with the support of the municipality, Telenor and MIT, initially to complete the flagship project “Electronic Sheperd” that had been started in 1995 as a local initiative, aiming to create mesh wireless, ad hoc networks to allow shepherds to electronically keep track of their sheep: “[T]he goal is to assist the traditional practice of Sami nomadic herding with nomadic data. Driven by changes in habitat and land use, aims include tracking the animals and their predators, monitoring their health, bringing them down when needed, and providing continuity of information throughout the animal products supply chain. Components of the system include short-range wireless tags for sheep or reindeer, GPS “bell” tags for the lead animals, and tag readers at salt licks inter- faced to a multi-hop 802.11 network.” [1]
More recently, the city of Graz (Austria) hosted the “Pop-up store” as part of a month-long event on design in May 2011. Graz just had been recognized as UNESCO City of Design in March 2011. The “Pop-up store” as a first of its kind: It is the first shop that only offered Open Design goods, products designed by local and international designers and made freely available under a Creative Commons license. The motive for such a license: Fair licensing and open design enables creative participation in the value chain. At the same time it opens designs up for future production, new products on demand, or production in small batches. The products sold at the “Pop-up store” were all produced locally, in Styria. The “Pop-up store” demonstrated, how local producers can be integrated in and benefit from digitally distributed designs. [2]
Fab Labs incorporate an interesting mix of characteristics that might seem contradictory at first, but might well be considered the best practical approximation of what Yochai Benkler describes as commons-based peer production that gives more people more control over their productivity in a self-directed and community-oriented way. More generally, the network approach of Fab Labs empower local labs, particularly in rural regions such as northern Scandinavia or the European Alps, to gain access to knowledge, expertise and creativity that tends to accumulate in more urban. At the same time, the open source principles foster sharing and allow communities to establish sustainable local participation in global value chains where a substantial part of the value created can be captured locally instead of dissipating in global corporations.
References
[1] Gershenfeld, Neil, and Prakash, Manu (2004). Personal communication fabrication in the Lyngen Alps. Telektronikk, 3, pp. 22-26. Available online at http://www.telenor.com/en/resources/images/Page_022-026_tcm28-45289.pdf (accessed 2 February 2011).
[2] Nußmüller, Wolfgang (2011). Pop-up Store: Open Design. woche.at, 13 May 2011. Available at from http://www.woche.at/graz/magazin/pop-up-store-open-design-d41542.html (accessed 13 May 2011).