Jake Read
MAS Prosem 2020
Because of its very concreteness, people tend to confront technology as an irreducible brute fact, a given, a first cause, rather than as hardened history, frozen fragments of human and social endeavor.
David F Nobel Forces of Production 1984
The Specialmatic “is designed to permit complete set-up and programming at the machine.” It would allow the machinist to gain the efficiency benefits of automation while retaining “full control of [their] machine throughout its entire machining cycle.”
American Machinist Magazine
management > labour
- deskilling (remove intelligence)
- union-busting (remove agency)
- capital intensity (remove humans)
We have a good deal of experience as to how the industrialists regard a new industrial potential [...]
Industry will be flooded with the new tools to the extent that they appear to yield immediate profits,
irrespective of what long-term damage they can do.
Norbert Wiener 1950
real problems
- inflexible manufacturing systems
- insecure supply chains
- lack of skilled labour
- wealth inequality
- job loss
can a just, equitable manufacturing model out perform the old guard?
delete management / labour distinction
build your own tools
run your own shop
collaborate in the open
hardware is hard
- capital
- time
- heterogeneity
software is easy(er)
- access to tools
- access to education
- infrastructure homogeneity
- integration of solved problems
- collaborative models
the 'research'
- open hardware designs
- modularity all-the-way-down
- open systems assembly protocol