I happened to be surfing around and via the Clanking Replicator project website I found a decent – though old – article over on AGORAVOX (link) discussing open source fabrication devices (in general) and RepRap (in particular) and the overall importance of these developments on the manufacturing world… especially China. There isn’t much explanation for why rapid manufacturing technology threatens China’s manufacturing dominance {it should be obvious, but at least in the U.S. there’s a whole lot of people who have no clue how things get made}, but I don’t need one since I’m already on record making the same observation. However, I’m also on record as saying it’ll be a long time before fab-on-demand has an appreciable impact; perhaps not until after my time on this rock has expired. Even so, it’s worth a read. And for those who aren’t familiar with traditional manufacturing and need some questions answered, feel free to post a comment.

Last September I felt rather alone in pointing out (reLink) that Peugeot’s 2007 Design Competition had a transreal component. Not only does the company usually make a full-size model of the winning entry to put on show, this time the winning design was to be heading for the XBox 360’s virtual roads. I’ve been aware of and interested in the competition since its inception, but that part was a welcome change from my biased perspective; anything to get designers to think across physical and virtual boundaries. Well, via C|Net’s Crave blog comes word (link) that Peugeot has posted the ten finalists. I like the one above, LiiON by Christian Sano, but there were a few others that made the choice somewhat difficult. Check them all out at the contest website (link – click on the logo to get that thing to load properly).

{Image source: Peugeot}

Six or seven years ago I was playing around with a script idea involving “sampleclans”, groups of kids who would sample real world things (including people, and especially celebrities) and then sell the collected information which was subsequently used to digitally re-create those things for other uses (I mentioned this idea a few months ago on the 3pointD blog – reLink). Of course the issue of collecting someone’s genetic information and thus their very identity was wrapped up in the thought… and in the plot.
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Nice entry on the Inhabitat blog (link) discussing Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis’ “contour crafting” system (link) (some of you might recall his name from an earlier blog entry – reLink). I’d suggest that in addition to the video and the Inhabitat entry that the comments are also worth checking out. And if you’ve not at least scanned the AIC technical document (link to PDF), I’d recommend doing so before reading those.
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Catching up on some blog reading I found an interesting entry on the MIT Advertising Lab discussing “reverse product placement” (Link). The post references a Harvard Business Review article by David Edery (Link) which unfortunately isn’t freely available except for this quote: “Retailers are starting to place real products in virtual worlds. It’s just a matter of time before virtual products make the leap into the real world.” Now I could buy his article for $6; only thing is, I’ve been working on that very idea for years – beyond the obvious ability to move a brandname (which already has precedent in the film world). In fact, the basic premise for going beyond just tradenames is at the core of the “Smiley Face Savvy” post (reLink) I wrote over a year ago. What I discuss there goes further than what I believe others – like BrandWeek’s Todd Wasserman (link) – are imagining: that a product’s manufacturing data can be as mobile as its name (which is why I wrote “The Accomplice” – reLink).

I have to confess that lately I’ve found very little of interest being reported in the blogosphere. Bad enough I can’t find much that’s new and exciting, but to see old stuff sold at $6 a pop is depression-inducing.