Sick article on Japanese repair culture and distributed manufacture over at Pulse Lazer.
It hits on the evolution of manufacturing and technology information dissemination in Japan, and extrapolates out to some of the things happening today.
They peg the concept of interchangeable parts as the world changing event in the process of manufacturing and that the introduction of interchangeable parts seems to spawn a second wave of imitators who become innovators and drive the process ever forward.
This pattern is traced from Bicycles > Cameras > Mobile Phone business today in India. Personally, I’d tack one more item onto that list and say that I see the virtual object building and rapid prototyping tools pushing this even further. The current state of rapid manufacturing is little better than bespoke craftsman putting out one off items. However, the new 3d creation tools like Sketchup and SecondLife are changing this for the better.
With the rise of cheaper rapid prototyping equipment and materials and the growth in 3d creation knowledge new industries are going to be formed by the same types of people that used to work in the bicycle, camera and mobile phone businesses.
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