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Technology and new products, when designed right, are powerful barrier-lifters that can unlock hidden talents we may have. Consider:
Before the original Mac, the graphic designer's desk was littered with X-acto blades, Letraset type sheets and French curves; the manual skill required to artfully operate those things kept the average Joe out of that game. But after the little beige box and programs like Pagemaker hit the market, suddenly everyone from Soccer Moms to church leaders were cranking out newsletters and flyers. They weren't all good, of course, but there had to have been at least a few people with good graphic sense who would never have tried graphic design the old-fashioned way.
Before digital cameras, any shooter worth their salt had inhaled their share of development chemicals, and the difficulties of learning about f-stops and shutter speeds an expensive 36 frames at a time meant not every Henry would become a Cartier-Bresson. Plus cameras were bulky. But now that they're small enough to carry everywhere, and everyone's got a digicam with absurd amounts of capacity, stock photo agencies like Getty are cruising Flickr, ready to pay the common man who may have inadvertently captured an uncommon shot.
Now that Garageband and iMovie have put musical composition and moviemaking in the hands of the masses, what's next? Will rapid prototyping become so ubiquitous that everyone will become an industrial designer, cranking out little corn-starch tchotchkes and parts on their desktop 3D printers?
Where do you see this trend going?
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Comments
RP technology is rapidly reducing in cost & will eventually become something that is part of our everyday life. Novels like the Diamond Age had predicted this for a while but the real area of innovation will come from RP & CNC combo devices that make products in the home with the fabrication plans being uploaded from the Web like one does with music or movies now. When is the only question remaining for me but my best estimate is 20 years.
what's sad is that i still inhale photo chemicals and have the X-acto/Letraset pile right beside me.
no, perhaps not sad. rather... nostalgic.
i can do the digital formats just as well, but i use the original methods for whimsy and it seems to attract attention from those who appreciate the art of _craft_.
granted, it IS less productive, but i believe that in a digital age, the beauty of the imperfections in analog processes will return.
Yes, it could be wonderful to have a device in your house that'll crank out utilitarian 3d objects. But in that, rapid prototyping carries with it a whole minefield of hazards when pitted against modern thinking. Consider, for instance, intellectual property laws. If someone acquires a pattern "illegally" (e.g. the pattern is for sale but the person who has the machine didn't get it that way) and someone produces it with his own materials, whose is it ultimately? If a producer makes 1000 copies with his own material of something for which he clearly doesn't own the patterns, how much is he liable for? Questions like this, now that we know to ask them, can kill an industry in its infancy.
Mass miniaturization has happened several times in different industries and questions of what it means to be an author or a designer or a musician or creative in any way when this occurs will always change. I recommend Clay Shirky's book 'here comes everybody' as the best piece of literature on this topic i know of. Maybe it is time to recognize the individual as a conduit for creativity and not the sole reason for it?
this topic has been hashed out heavily on the boards, check it out:
http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?t=16060
Take a look at http://www.picitup.com a very professional image search site, which allows you to search flickr images by their license, filter by colors, shapes, layout. It also categorized the best pictures visually and makes the whole image search fun