Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication

[tcavalo]

I never thought I would see the day when I could finally move beyond legos to build my own personal Deathstar. :p

[120dbdavid]

Flying Saucers,Flying Triangles,UFO's How They Fly,

[memorizable2020]

I'm punch-drunk from punchlines at 14m, 16m, and 17m, I've lost count....

[hieroglyph321]

Fascinating. Thanks.

[thesparitan]

this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in the my life. I dont believe it

[greenarmadel]

seemed easy enough to follow if, like his intended audience, you already know some very basic premises

[AndrasAnders]

How does he breath? Hard to listen too...

[NikoKun]

hehe, in Jr High we had a tech lab that was very similar to these Fab Labs, and it was everyone's favorite class. We each spent time at the different stations, working with the different equipment, creating all sorts of devices and cool things. Plastic vacuform machines, electronics/circuits/devices, Airplane stuff with a mini wind-tunnel, biological experiments, computerized plastic carving machines. I'd give anything to work in such a place again, and have access to all those tools.

[longfootbuddy]

i agree, hes a rambler and is hard to follow

[matchbox555]

wtf is he talking about ?

his communication skills suck

[incipientelse]

no: his presentation is extremely streamlined to fit into the fixed format of TED presentations - his presentation is logical and sequential, although if he lost you somewhere it is up to you to go back, find where you got lost, and get back up to speed. wtf is your attention span so minute?

[matchbox555]

bullshit

he needs to take communication skill classes

[artilistic]

i totally agree every thing is simple and can be explained simply its people tho that work really hard and want to make it sound complicated because they worked so hard to get over that wall they don't want just anyone to be able to understand it easily

[mrkvamaster]

W O W !

[MrLesWhite]

wow this is already realized! problem is MIT's ingenuity as he points out somewhat ends at the technical execution.

too bad they don't allow the public more access to innovations to develop applications, because as pharma fig R&D is the small step; the clinical trials are where the gold is. I am sure countless life enhancements were left on the cutting room floor due to short sightedness ahh

[pbb72]

The problem is, he makes simple things sound incredibly complicated.

He could have been a huge success as a stand-up comedian talking like this about every-day stuff.

But as a presenter of "alternative" thinking / "new" ideas, he fails miserably.

[1schwererziehbar1]

heh? what die valentina kofi make?

[Tedsuzan]

I wanna go to a FAB lab! I once duct-taped a piano bench to my back. I have other inventions/ideas though; Ah, progress...

[lonecretin]

Great, more techno-utopian crap of the Kurzweil variety. This shit never pans out the way they think it will.

As long as the world turns, there will always be haves and have-nots. A society of true equals is against the laws that govern the universe. It's nature, and nature cannot be fucked with.

[jama463]

If it's a universal law, you should be able to prove it mathematically. So, prove mathematically that every single human being can not have what he or she wants.

[TheGift87]

@jama463 powerful comment

[eddiehatred]

@jama463 Your logic is flawed, it assumes mathematics is a complete system.

[thunderbow]

Wow, that was really fascinating! I want more! And yes, thank God for TED!!!

[chopinplaya]

Okay, so an 8 year old girl built a chip... does it do anything? If so, how does an 8 year old girl from ghana with no technical knowledge or background or experience just throw some shit together that does something?

This smells like a huge steaming pile of bullshit. There wasn't so much content in this presentation as there was over-your-head technical mumbo jumbo and references to past advances in technology.

Give me the details and show me how it works and I'll believe it.

[quibbage]

just because you cant understand all that "technical mumbo jumbo" doesn't mean you should bash it.

[chopinplaya]

And I expect that you do understand it.

[epizzleanizzle]

What ever happened to the idea that if you didn't understand something, it made you stupid, and not the subject that is beyond you?

[daniel246]

hes one of those people who understands something in a second and thinks u get it as well but no you r a mile left behined.

[tomvanbrunschot]

With our imagination we create a different reality into being.

[tomvanbrunschot]

"Imagination is more important than knowlegde" - Albert Einstein

Could it be that:

Mind/Energy/Imaginagle or DreamWorld turns into Information/Bits/Digital or Virtual World turns into Matter/Atoms/Physical World

Mens agitat molem. Mind moves matter.

[BMWsky]

Thanks god for TED. LMAO

[leeandrew85]

my god, this will change the way our materials, chemicals, anything gets made. The best part is around 10:00 when he talks about this being the Star Trek replicator

[coddot]

i do not really get it

[swingbabu2006]

Imagine to build a house, all you have to do is collect all materials like - bricks and wooden blocks and steel - required for building and just pile them together. Those materials will interact and form position themselves in proper way, so that a house will be the ultimate results. Kind of interesting idea isn't it ?. By the way those materials wont be steel or clay... but accordig to my understanding from his speech, they are smart devices.

[swingbabu2006]

Also that device where the girl scream into it and then released that voice later outdoor, can be made out of a digital voice recorder and a sound proof bag, but thats not what she did (i hope;-)). That bag is made of material which can store sound and release later on. So the concept of storing information in transistors are gone, these smart devices or materials can store and process data. Thats the whole point of this presentation I guess...

[coddot]

thank you for explaining me what it is about

[swingbabu2006]

You are welcome. There is another presentation "Inventor Saul Griffith shares some innovative ideas TEDTalks" talking about similar subject. Very interesting...

[chychochycho]

awesome :-)