Vertical Integration and Moore’s Law for Atoms

At Replicator, Joe Flaherty writes:

My guess is that the increasing availability of small scale manufacturing tools will lead to more vertical integration. Product inventors will be able to fund their designs via Kickstarter, produce them at Protomold, create a store front using Shopify, and send products to customers using Amazons “Fulfillment By Amazon” service.

….There will be more friction than with web innovation, but I have a feeling we will soon see a Cambrian explosion in the physical world as CAD, production, and fulfillment become available to anyone with an idea.

This is essentially what John Robb calls “individual superempowerment.”  Open-source warfare “enables individuals and groups to take on much larger foes,” as

the power of individuals and small groups is amplified via access to open networks (that grow in value according to Metcalfe’s law = Internet growth + social networks running in parallel) and off the shelf technology (that grows rapidly in power due to the onslaught of Moore’s law and the market’s relentless productization).

As Felix Stalder wrote elsewhere:

There is a vast amount of infrastructure—transportation, communication, financing, production—openly available that, until recently, was only accessible to very large organisations. It now takes relatively little—a  few dedicated, knowledgeable people—to connect these pieces into a powerful platform from which to act.

3 Comments Vertical Integration and Moore’s Law for Atoms

  1. AvatarBen Tremblay

    A work I cited very often years ago had to do with the growth / change of individual’s social networks. Take away: at a certain point the network stops becoming more varied. And with further growth it actually becomes more homogenous as “variant” nodes are trimmed.

    Lots of obviously “good” things to be said about #AttentionEconomy … like there is about white flour and white sugar. HeyHo

    @bentrem | @ITGeek

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.