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I've been thinking along similar lines - I'd term it "the rise of the micromarket". There are a bunch of technology trends that I think may be converging long-term to erase the era of mass production and mass market consumer goods. One is that advances in personalization on the Internet haven't carried through to physical goods. When I want to curate my Facebook or Reddit feed, I can very tightly control the information I consume so it fits my lifestyle perfectly. When I want to buy a piece of furniture or shelf on Amazon, I get stuck in this uncanny valley where there are millions of products available but none is exactly the size, shape, color, and material that I want. Why can't I say "I want a double corner wall shelf, 23" on one side and 29" on the other, 8" deep, filigreed supports, made out of pine and painted to match my walls"? Another is that manufacturing is increasingly labor-free and computer-controlled anyway. In a factory, there's going to be a bunch of CNC machines, computer-controlled sawmills, maybe some injection molds, 3D-printers for prototyping, pick-n-place machines, etc. Most of these are computer-controlled anyway, with humans only needed to feed & adjust the machines. Could you computer-control a home or neighborhood machine instead, so that people only need to download a blueprint from the Internet or make it themselves? Why do we need such big production runs, if computers can reconfigure the manufacturing without any human labor? Why not have people buy plastic filament, scrap aluminum, scrap stainless steel, OSB or plywood or 2x4s, and then just feed the machine with a pre-built software blueprint? A third is improved new manufacturing technologies, particularly 3D printing and pick & place machines. It feels like these are still stuck in existing paradigms, trying to fit into the mass-market industrial production system rather than experimenting with novel combinations on their own. For example, what if instead of P&Ping just electronic components on a circuit board, you used it to assemble individual plastic, metal, and wood parts that had previously been 3D-printed, and then 3D-printed joints to hold them in place? Could you use miniaturized CnC lathes to smooth down the surface of a 3D-printed part, which has traditionally been one of the big problems with 3D-printing? Then there are environmental problems with supply chains being fragile and globalization potentially unwinding. That could provide an extra kick to hyper-localize manufacturing again. Micro-manufacturing is the real Amazon killer, potentially. I can't see them being displaced in retail now. But if we just stop buying manufactured products and start making them ourselves, all of their advantages in supply chain management, bargaining, product selection, and logistics go away. |