Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

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Chris Anderson

Random House, New York, London, 2012, English

Design, General; Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design; Nonfiction, Digital Media Design

6.4 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches, hardcover, 272 pages

ISBN: 9781847940650

Suggested Retail Price: $26.00

From the Publisher. If a country wants to remain economically vibrant, it needs to manufacture things. In recent years, however, many nations have become obsessed with making money out of selling services, leaving the real business of manufacturing to others.

Makers is about how all that is being reversed. Over the past ten years, the Internet has democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, leading to a massive increase in the range of participation in everything digital—the world of bits. Now the same is happening to manufacturing—the world of things.

Chris Anderson, bestselling author of The Long Tail, explains how this is happening: how such technologies as 3D printing and electronics assembly are becoming available to everybody, and how people are building successful businesses as a result. Whereas once every aspiring entrepreneur needed the support of a major manufacturer, now anybody with a smart idea and a little expertise can make their ideas a reality. Just as Google, Facebook, and others have created highly successful companies in the virtual world, so these new inventors and manufacturers are assuming positions of ever greater importance in the real world. The next industrial revolution is on its way.

On 3 book lists

Hugh Hardy

On Hugh Hardy’s Book List

Commentary on new forms of manufacturing in the digital age.

Daijiro Mizuno

On Daijiro Mizuno’s Notable Books of 2012 list

In November 2012, MUJI held an exhibition entitled “Patterns of Furniture in Tokyo” and last year Droog mounted the exhibition “Design for Download” in Milan. Why are these design firms sharing and selling digital data? Because digital manufacturing (digital fabrication) is changing the role and meaning of design and designers. Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of Free and The Long Tail, introduces the Maker Movement, the rise of a new kind of DIY through digital fabrication; how 3D printers, 3D scanners, Computer Numerical Control Cutting Machines, and laser cutters can democratize the way we design, make, share, and sell things. Makers sketches the future of design.

Massimo Pitis

On Massimo Pitis’s Notable Books of 2012 list

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