Industrialisation and the advent of mass production has created a flood of homogenised products and along with many other technological developments is largely responsible for the world we live in today.

I would love to see the future of manufacturing become more bespoke.  A world where the customer can choose to add their own unique touches to any product they buy, from everyday household items to the car they drive in and the house that they live in.

3d printing and smaller scale manufacturing will feature strongly in this movement.

Though the technology is still reasonably expensive to buy for an end user, anyone that can use a 3d modelling program can access web based services like iMaterialise or a variety of local services like RapidPro or Formero in Melbourne. Along with machine lathes, machine routers and laser cutters the potential to create is awesome.

The potential to generate organic, fractal, highly detailed and mechanical shapes is amazing, limited only by your imagination, software you have access too and your skill in creating a 3-dimensional representation of it. Where once you may have needed skills in working wood, metal, ceramics, plastics plus skill with the material’s associated tools and machinery, we are quickly arriving at a point where skills with software are the only prerequisite in creating whatever you can imagine.

That said… There will never be a time where hand made and tooled objects are without value or a place in our society, there will always be beauty and enjoyment both for the makers and admirers of hand made work.