Of course old-style manufacturers (vertically integrated oligopoly corporations) are going to keep their production processes closed and proprietary.

And of course peer production will have to develop outside the old hierarchies, through an alternative system of bottom-up networks.

Isn’t that the point? To borrow terminology from the old Wobbly slogan, peer production is part of the “new society” we are building, and the corporate dinosaurs are the “shell of the old.”

The fact is that the barrier is being significantly lowered in design, rapid prototyping, distribution, fabrication, manufacturing, finance, and marketing.

We are not yet at the point where people can put all of these pieces together to make a “car”, or other mass-produced consumer product.

However, I think that we are going to see something different than a 1:1 replacement for mass production.

What I think we are going to see emerge first are tested useable design technology “foundations” that will be Open Design oriented. These will emerge from designs that hobbyists are playing around with right now, like the open source car, open source controllers, open source house designs, etc. Lead users, Pro-Ametuer, enthusiasts, etc, are right now starting to create these open designs. I think that they will begin to use rapid prototyping technology more and more to test their designs, all the while sharing the evolution of these open technologies online.

The “heavy manufacturing” that we see in huge factories could emerge from this in at least a couple of different ways:

* It could be easily be replaced by many smaller custom-crafting shops who have the abilty to quickly retool and manufacture based upon the open design base, and open design standards that will inevitably emerge.

* Large industries could also emerge based around open designs. Think about the origins of Apple Computer.

I think that both of these will happen. The first possibility is something that I am going to explore here locally in Michigan, where traditional mass manufacturing jobs (like Automobile manufacturing) are leaving. This leaves a large technically-skilled work force who tend to leave the area to find similar work elsewhere. I believe these people could find employment in smaller fabrication speciality shops that are increasingly in-expensive to create and mainatain, and could base their fabrication around open design. We are still a little far off from this, but I think that just a few examples could really show how workable it is.

I think that this will start to gain a critical mass of enthusiasts over time, for different areas of design and prototyping. I think this will eventually start to attract people who can envision putting together teams of people in “value chain” networks, that can create many short-run or medium-run versions of different technologies. This will allow people to have the exact kind of car they want, the exact kind of furnace they want, the exact kind of furniture, computer, etc etc etc, within the bounds of the design bases and fabrication limits of the teams or groups that are out there. So, ther will still be real limits, but if I want a 3 wheeled super aerodynamic vehicle that is electric/diesel/solar/bio-fuel with satellite radio, bluetooth, mp3, gps, for around 30,000, then this might be the route for me to go to get it.

Plus, you would have the possibility of p2p financing, etc.