[yk]

The discussion focussed on the entire technological stack; and I do not think that anybody claims that we will be designing and printing comercial airliners from scratch at home. By contrast the maker revolution is (in its first stages) about the long tail of manufactoring. So in the forseeable future it is about beeing able to sell small runs of specialized goods at prices compareable to more generic and mass produced competition. While we still need several million people to produce the arduinos that power them.

[berntb]

The discussion noted all the specialities needed in education. The point I was trying to make is that a maker revolution has a potential to drastically cut down the number of specialized people needed; consider just e.g. logistics. (Not talking about the first stages.)

[yk]

Great point. This could be one of the non obvious social consequences of rapid manufacturing. At least if I think of the IT revolution, then in some sense system programmers replaced a lot different specialties, like delivery boys ( by email), accountants ( at least the half that was double checking the books fifty years ago) and type setters. And in a addition people with domain specific knowledge were enabled to use this knowledge efficiently with computers.