When President Obama first mentioned 3D printing in his State of the Union speech in 2013, it served as a delayed but inevitable herald of the digital fabrication revolution:
"A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. There’s no reason this can’t happen in other towns."
Led by the influx of 3D printers and desktop CNC routers, this “revolution” promises to diminish the barrier of manufacturing, to release workers from systems that once bound them by bringing manufacturing to our home, our workplace. In scaling down the size of components manufactured, proponents now claim “anybody can make”, a belief mirrored by their cousins in Silicon Valley. Both assert that the very act of creating will liberate those who buy products to now make and sell their own, which will in turn somehow dissolve existing class and racial differences...
Via Jacques Urbanska