In response to my Dharma of file sharing post, visual artist Tom Gokey, whose work readers may know from Speculations journal, shared a link to his video on “Public Libraries, 3D Printing, FabLabs, and Hackerspaces.” It is… stunning in its implications. Just watch.
The democratization of production? The total plasticization of the world?
Tom wants to read the book that will become The Wealth of Nations or Kapital for the new economic system that will result from these technologies. I would like to throw a quiet warning into the mix: since both Adam Smith and Karl Marx got the future of their own visions very wrong (witness: capitalism today, and communism/socialism circa 1990 or, better yet, 1932-3), should we find this new Adam Marx of the New Digital Wilderness — send out a search party like Tibetan monks on the quest for the new Karmapa or Dalai Lama — and quickly innoculate him against utopian over-reach? A quick course in the history of how-things-become-completely-different-from-what-we-intend-them-to-be? (G. I. Gurdjieff had the right insight about this.)
Class assignment: In the world that will result from this, what, if anything, will the following mean (or become)? Nature. Culture. Materiality. Textuality. Plasticity. Writing. Wild(er)ness. Domestication. Property. Freedom. Ecology. Reality.
I love the idea that we will all one day be Children of Joseph Beuys.
Minor correction. Adam Smith is “free market,” not “capitalism.”
I guess you’re right, Jason – he shouldn’t be blamed for what’s done in his name. (And the same goes for Marx.)
It strikes me how little most people have actually read of either Smith or Marx. My students, for example, have very strong opinions about this kind of thing but haven’t ready a word of either (well some at least have read “The Communist Manifesto” but that’s it).
Smith would be labeled an all out communist by the Tea Party if he were alive today, what with advocating social welfare programs and something like a progressive tax.
Many of my students are shocked, in total disbelief that Marx was an advocate of true democracy. They’ve just got it in their heads that whatever Marx stood for it was the opposite of democracy.
Yes, I was too quick there… Maybe I should have blamed Milton Friedman (a latecomer, but blameworthy nonetheless) and… dunno, Stalin? The latter wasn’t an economist, but he did write about economics, and run a massive economy.
Either way, much to think about with the ‘printing’ of… everything (human tissue included?). When I mentioned it to a friend while driving in the Green Mountains today, he suggested driving to the top of one of them and jumping off. 😉
[…] at immanence Adrian has some good points and questions about our nano 3D printing future. Tom wants to read the book that will become The Wealth of […]
I’d blame Milton Friedman for anything and everything.
I started writing a comment in an attempt to answer some of your questions but it got way to long for a comment so I’ve posted it here:
http://www.publicpraxis.com/youwillsuffermylove/?p=1118
Don’t jump off a mountain! This is going to be fun.