Technologyquarterly December 3Rd 2011
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Fooling the body’s Superconductors, Hybrids reinvent defence systems 100 years on the wheel TechnologyQuarterly December 3rd 2011 Cities on the ocean Libertarians dream of creating self-governing fl oating colonies. Will the idea sink or swim? TQCOV-December03-2011.indd 1 21/11/2011 17:30 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 3rd 2011 Monitor 1 Contents On the cover Libertarians dream of creating self-governing, ocean-going cities. To do so they must work out how to build seasteads in the rst place; nd a way to escape the legal shackles of sovereign states; and give people a good reason to move in. What are More than just digital quilting their chances? Page 8 Monitor 1 The rise of the maker movement, multispectral document scanning, humans as computers, computerised Technology and society: The maker movement could change how science is pathology, a new way to monitor corrosion, measuring taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution the viscosity of tomato sauce, HE scene in the park surrounding New York’s Maker Faire was a pavilion labelled and who won our innovation TYork’s Hall of Science, on a sunny with an obscure Italian name: Arduino awards this year weekend in mid-September, resembles a (meaning strong friend). Inside, visitors futuristic craft fair. Booths displaying were greeted by a dozen stands displaying Dierence engine handmade clothes sit next to a pavilion credit-card-sized circuit boards. These are 7 The devil in the details full of electronics and another populated Arduino micro-controllers, simple com- The mathematics of buying a by toy robots. In one corner visitors can puters that make it easy to build all kinds high-denition television learn how to pick locks, in another how to of strange things: plants that send Twitter use a soldering iron. All this and much messages when they need watering, a Seasteading more was on oer at an event called Mak- harp made of lasers, an etch-a-sketch 8 Cities on the ocean er Faire, which attracted more than 35,000 clock, a microphone that serves as a Will the libertarian dream of visitors. This show and an even bigger one breathalyser, or a vest that displays your oating colonies sink or swim? in Silicon Valley, held every May, are the speed when riding a bike. most visible manifestations of what has Such projects are taking o because Biomedicine come to be called the maker movement. Arduino is aordable (basic boards cost It started on America’s West Coast but is $20), can easily be extended using add-ons 11 Breaching the body’s defences spreading around the globe: a Maker Faire called shields to add new functions and New tricks are being developed was held in Cairo in October. has a simple programming system that to sneak drugs into the body The maker movement is both a re- almost anyone can use. Not knowing sponse to and an outgrowth of digital what you are doing is an advantage, says Inside story culture, made possible by the convergence Massimo Banzi, an Italian engineer and 13 Resistance is futile of several trends. New tools and electronic designer who started the Arduino project Superconductors are nally components let people integrate the physi- a decade ago to enable students to build spreading into power grids cal and digital worlds simply and cheaply. all kinds of contraptions. Arduino has Online services and design software make since become popularselling around Flywheels it easy to develop and share digital blue- 200,000 units in 2011because Mr Banzi 16 Reinventing the wheel prints. And many people who spend all made the board’s design open source A new kind of hybrid car uses day manipulating bits on computer (which means that anyone can download mechanical not electrical storage screens are rediscovering the pleasure of its blueprints and build their own ver- making physical objects and interacting sions), and because he has spent much Brain scan with other enthusiasts in person, rather time and eort getting engineers all over 18 Seer of the mirror world than online. Currently the preserve of the world involved with the project. A prole of David Gelernter, a hobbyists, the maker movement’s impact This openness has prompted a sizeable visionary of the virtual world may be felt much farther aeld. ecosystem of add-ons. They include a Start with hardware. The heart of New touch-screen, an illuminated display and 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 3rd 2011 2 support for Wi-Fi networking. Other rms real community, says Mitch Altman, a have built specialised variants of Arduino. co-founder of Noisebridge. SparkFun, for instance, has developed This sort of thing makes the maker Lilypad, a exible micro-controller that movement sound a lot like the digital A classic can be sewn into clothing (think blinking equivalent of quilting bees. But it has T-shirts), along with many other add-ons. already had a wider impact, mainly in invention Applying the open-source approach to schools in America. Many have discov- hardware has also driven the develop- ered 3D printers and Arduino boardsand ment of the maker movement’s other are using them to make their science and Multispectral imaging: A scanner favourite piece of kit, which could be technology classes more hands-on again, that sees a wider range of colours found everywhere at the Maker Faire in and teach students to be producers as well 3D than the human eye is unlocking New York: printers. These machines as users of digital products. previously illegible manuscripts are another way to connect the digital and All this will boost innovation, predicts the physical realms: they take a digital Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make ECHNOLOGICAL spin-outs from model of an object and print it out by magazine, a central organ of the maker Tuniversities are usually expected to building it up, one layer at a time, using movement. Its tools and culture emerge from the engineering department, plastic extruded from a nozzle. The promote experimentation, the school of medicine or the faculty of technique is not new, but in collaboration and rapid physics. At Oxford, however, they like to recent years 3D printers have improvement. Makers do things dierently. The latest invention become cheap enough for can play in niches that to emerge from the dreaming spires of consumers. MakerBot In- big rms ignorethough England’s oldest university is the brain- dustries, a start-up based in they are watching the child not of any of these academic New York, now sells its ma- maker movement and Johnny-come-latelies, but rather of a chines for $1,300. The output will borrow ideas from it, Mr group who trace their origins to Oxford’s quality is rapidly improving Dougherty believes. The Maker medieval foundation: its classicists. thanks to regular upgrades, many of Faire in New York was sponsored by The multispectral-imaging scanner them suggested by users. technology companies including HP and developed in the faculty of classics by None of this action in hardware would Cognizant. Autodesk, which makes com- Dirk Obbink, a lecturer in papyrology and have happened without a second set of puter-aided design software, bought Greek literature, and Alexander Koval- powerful drivers: software, standards and Instructables in August. chuk, a mathematician and physicist, is online communities. Arduino, for in- Firms may also copy some of the un- able to detect traces of faded or hidden stance, relies on open-source programs usual business models that makers, often inks and paints in historical manuscripts, that turn simple code into a form that can accidental entrepreneurs, have come up expose forged documents and art works, be understood by the board’s brain. Simi- with. Arduino lets other rms copy its and highlight forensic evidence such as larly, MakerBot’s 3D printers depend on a designs, for example, but charges them to ngerprints and stains from bodily uids. standard way to describe physical objects, use its logo. Quirky, an industrial design It will soon be available commercially called STL, and aordable software to rm based in New York City, uses crowd- from a rm called Oxford Multi Spectral. design them. Some basic modelling pro- sourcing to decide which products to Multispectral imaging works by scan- grams, such as Google SketchUp and make. MakieLab of London is developing ning objects at a series of specic fre- Blender, can be downloaded free. a platform to allow toy shops or individ- quencies both within and beyond the As for online communities, Arduino uals to develop customised toys and have visible spectrum. It is able to highlight has an active forum on its website, while them printed. Venture capitalists are nos- details human eyes cannot normally see, MakerBot runs a website called Thingi- ing around the eld. In recent months either because they are swamped by the 1 verse, which lets people share 3D designs. Quirky raised $16m, MakerBot raised $10m YouTube and other video-sharing sites and Shapeways, a rm that oers a 3D- oer how-to clips for almost everything. printing service, received $5m. On Instructables, users post and discuss The parallel with the hobbyist comput- recipes to make and do all kinds of things. er movement of the 1970s is striking. In And then there is Etsy, an online market- both cases enthusiastic tinkerers, many on place for handmade goods, from hand- America’s West Coast, began playing with knitted scarves to 3D-printed jewellery. new technologies that had huge potential The ease with which designs for physi- to disrupt business and society. Back then cal things can be shared digitally goes a the machines manipulated bits; now the long way towards explaining why the action is in atoms.