Joel Johnson takes a somewhat contrarian view of my cover story in the latest edition of Wired, "In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits." Joel's article on Gizmodo is headlined: "Atoms Are Not Bits; Wired Is Not A Business Magazine."
Cheap shots aside, I think there's one important thing Joel missed that explains what's new in all of this: the tools of making are now digital and thus it leads to Manufacturing more more easily. We've always tinkered in our garages, but it was hard to go from prototype to production.
Now the makers and manufacturers use the same file formats, from Eagle PCB files to 3D CAD, so if you can make one copy you can make a thousand with little more than a few clicks.
This is why Making is Manufacturing. If you've done one, you can do a million. It doesn't matter that much where it's done; what matters is who's doing it.
That's the real revolution.
