Group items tagged

"During the one-day session on April 19 at the AutoDesk Gallery, experts, researchers, and guests explored the many different frontiers where 3D printing and open manufacturing are changing the way that things are made. Among the topics that were explored were:"

"The sewing machine was the smartphone of the nineteenth century. Just skim through the promotional materials of the leading sewing-machine manufacturers of that distant era and you will notice the many similarities with our own lofty, dizzy discourse. The catalog from Willcox & Gibbs, the Apple of its day, in 1864, includes glowing testimonials from a number of reverends thrilled by the civilizing powers of the new machine. One calls it a "Christian institution"; another celebrates its usefulness in his missionary efforts in Syria; a third, after praising it as an "honest machine," expresses his hope that "every man and woman who owns one will take pattern from it, in principle and duty." The brochure from Singer in 1880-modestly titled "Genius Rewarded: or, the Story of the Sewing Machine"-takes such rhetoric even further, presenting the sewing machine as the ultimate platform for spreading American culture. The machine's appeal is universal and its impact is revolutionary. Even its marketing is pure poetry:"

Micro Drones and 3d printing!

Taken together, these discoveries mean that one can write out a life code, manipulate a cell, and execute a specific desired function. It means we can convert cells into programmable manufacturing entities. But this software builds its own hardware, allowing companies to begin using bacteria to produce chemicals, fuels, medicines, textiles, data storage, or any series of organic products.

Great summary article which covers the basics with lots of video examples.

""We want to demolish museums and libraries," the fevered Italian aesthetic revolutionary F.T. Marinetti declared in his 1909 Futurist Manifesto. "Museums, cemeteries!" Maybe so, maybe no. I'll vote no -- and so, I think, would photographer Richard Barnes, whose fascinating exhibit "Animal Logic," which documents the Smithsonian and other natural history museums as containers of imagined histories and outrageous dreams, is on view this month at Blue Sky Gallery. "