http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2009/10/today-at-p2p-foundation-blog-review-of.html

Ryan: From what I could see, the knowledge of Fabbing was spread mainly through informal apprenticeships and the internal growth of the Maker culture.

PM Lawrence: I don’t doubt there are all sorts of ways that licensing, health and safety regulations, etc., could be used to suppress or contain this. But on the plus side, in an era of network information culture there’s IMO a strong likelihood the state would have to fight a losing propaganda battle, with the Streisand Effect and all the rest of it coming into play. And the potential ugliness and divisiveness of the issue will reinforce other problems, like political turmoil in the state and the growing ability of minorities to block positive agendas by the majority. My hope is that the state will be too paralyzed to act decisively to suppress the new forms of production, that the latter will spread and diffuse themselves so rapidly as to catch older structures off-guard, and that partisans of the new economy will wage relentless propaganda war against potential attempts at suppression.

Orin: I think you’ll find that the “themepunks” part of the story winds up dovetailing with the fabbing part in all sorts of interesting ways, in Part Three. My discussion of the actual plot of Parts Two and Three was just a teaser, for space limitations. The stuff in Part Three involving DiaB and Sammy Page is probably right up your alley.

Andrew B. Watt: It could be that the prolonged crisis of mass-production industry (click the link above on “The Decline and Fall of Sloanism”), and more recent crises of Peak Oil and the state’s fiscal exhaustion, are the kind of event you’re looking for.

I noticed, BTW, that a couple of commenters under Robb’s post criticized Doctorow for excessive emphasis on 3-D printers as the heart of the micromanufacturing revolution. I left the issue out of my review for reasons of space, but I agree that he put too much of a spotlight on 3-D printing at the expense of the cheap, homebrew CNC subtractive tools that are proliferating now. But thee thing is, that doesn’t change the essential outline of the story or its validity.

Printing was confined to the city of Mainz for almost a decade after its invention. Gutenberg and his partner Jacob Furst tried to maintain a monopoly on the technology. In… 1463, I think?… the archbishop of Mainz took control using a mercenary army, killed about 800 citizens as rebels against his authority, and expelled another 1500. Among those expelled were Gutenberg, Furst, their apprentices and journeymen.

Without cash or guild-like control over their members, and with the potential for vagrancy charges hanging over their former employees, Furst and Gutenberg no longer had the wherewithal to compel the journeymen and apprentices to keep the secrets of printing. Print shops opened all over Germany and soon all over. Within a decade there were over a hundred printing businesses in Europe.

It’s often the case that you need a catalyst or crisis to make this kind of change occur. For printing it was a Church official reasserting his authority. For microfacturing, it may be something else.