Picking up where I left off with my previous post, there’s a nice read over on Wired today called “Imagine, Make It Real in Fab Lab“. Nothing terribly new here but this part got my attention:

“I’m not worried about being out of a job, but I think there would be new uses for this technology that people can’t even imagine,” said Gianfranco Zaccai, president and chief executive of Design Continuum, a Boston design and development firm. “It might be a harbinger for the return of the village craftsman in a world of high technology.”

Sounds very much like how I explained this on the Core77 forum over a year ago:

There’s an argument for two kinds of IDer: those that exist in big corp product machines, pumping out cell phone give-aways to entice people to sign service contracts; and those that address the more fickle and competitive niche markets too small for the corporations to care about. Corp job will be safer (at least in appearance – anyone can get fired). The indy IDer will have to be more scrappy and agile. Maybe form a small community and probably exist more like the underground film industry (an interesting community, for sure).

I’m describing something more like the evolution of craftsmen (“person” for the pc). A ceramicist has tools like a wheel and a kiln. But as RP drops in price, an IDers tools may be a PC and SLA machine (or just access to the service)

Now the question on my mind is, does Zaccai lurk over on Core?