Laptops, Looms and Blacksmiths
I’m re-reading Cory Doctorow’s ‘Makers’, before the first day of Laptops and Looms tomorrow. It’s a novel on the near future of manufacture, industry, corporate America and so on.
Whether this quote squirrelled itself into my brain when I read it over a year ago, I don’t know…
“Any moderately skilled practitioner can build anything these days, for practically nothing. Back in the old days, the blacksmith just made every bit of ironmongery everyone needed, one piece at a time, at his forge. That’s where we’re at. Every industry that required a factory yesterday only needs a garage today. It’s a real return to fundamentals. What no one ever could do was join up all the smithies and all the smiths and make them into a single logical network with a single set of objectives…”