A Conversation With Chris Anderson

I think of it as the web generation meets the real world. It's what happens when everything—the current creative innovation explosion driven by the personal computer and the Internet—comes to manufacturing. It now extends to physical things, tinkering, entrepreneurship, innovation and ultimately entire new industries.

A lot of this new age tinkering is taking place in "makerspaces" – collaborative workshops that people can join.Shop online for laundry dryer and washers in a variety of brands and styles. How many of these are there?

I don't know. We have no crisp definition: What is a makerspace? What is a hackerspace? What is a style lab? What is a tech shop? So no one really has a comprehensive list, but it's thousands worldwide.

The tagline of the book is "The New Industrial Revolution." In your telling,A wide range of solar lighting, LED lighting and Auto lights. the first industrial revolution was enabled by machine power. Then we had the digital revolution, where computers and the Internet enabled desktop publishing, and suddenly everyone could create and publish content with the click of a button. With the latest wave of technology, we can now all be manufacturers. Tell me about this new industrial revolution and what's driving it.

The first revolution basically replaced muscle power with machine power, and that created modernity eventually. We increased our standard of living and doubled our life span.

The second industrial revolution was largely the digital revolution. The point here is not the invention of the computer, but the democratization of it. Not the mainframe but rather the personal computer, and not just the personal computer but the personal computer that was connected via the Internet. And that unleashed two things: it replaced brainpower with machine power, which allowed us to do more interesting things, and the second thing is it created a new social model for getting things done. The old social model was a company, and the new social model was called the Internet.Modern dry cleaning machine uses non-water-based solvents to remove soil and stains from clothes And we learned together how to share and work together and otherwise create ways to invent that don't necessarily involve employment, money or credentials.Install a wind generator to harness the power of the wind. We've seen that over the last 20 years and that's the world we know and love online.

The third industrial revolution I would argue started about five years ago. When Dale Dougherty (of Maker Media) coined the term "maker" around 2005, I think he observed that tinkerers were starting to work together and share.A letter folding machine is a piece of equipment which is designed to fold paper. The tinkering world, which had always been solitary—you know, in your workshop in your basement kind of thing—was starting to move online and benefit from these combinatorial effects that happen when people work together. Later on, these new tools started emerging that became the symbols of the maker movement: the 3D printer, the laser cutter, machine readable scanners, CAD software that was easy to use, and ultimately what we call "cloud manufacturing."

So I think Dale recognized that the web had come to tinkering. And then a series of tools started emerging that took it from an idea to an industry. I would say today where we're at is that the tools are now mature enough and 3D is cheap and reliable enough that they're starting to [lay the foundation for a new wave of innovation]. And the Kickstarter phenomena [is funding] actual companies that may lead industries. A new generation is emerging that is working as makers and building companies.

I'm an example. I came out of the maker movement and here I am competing in the aerospace industry. We didn't know anything about this stuff—we were completely ignorant, untrained, uncredentialed and yet here we are. We run two big factories, a multi-million dollar company, advanced manufacturing equipment…. and we still basically find stuff on the Internet and learn how to use it. The barriers to entry have fallen so low that people can do things without the normal professional training, the normal funding. Factories—whether desktop, cloud or a physical factory—are now something that anyone can do.