The world is several steps closer to the kind of open source innovation in electronics that I predicted back in February. I recently heard a podcast interview with MIT's Neil Gershenfeld about their Center for Bits and Atoms' "Fab Lab" outreach program that brings prototyping capabilities to under-served communities that have been beyond the reach of conventional technology development and deployment. The abilities of these "Fab Labs" is almost exactly what I was describing as "custom electronics manufacturers".
The availability of this kind of rapid and personal fabrication will greatly accelerate the pace of innovation, especially of open design that allow others to freely create derivative designs that build on earlier work of others. One of the strongest assets of open source development techniques is accelerated design progress through the rapid application of small individually applied design tweaks.
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