Weblogsky: Doc on the Glass Roots Revolution

Doc on the Glass Roots Revolution

Doc Searls has nuts and bolts info that lines up pretty well with my posts at Worldchanging about the DIY home of the future (here and here). Doc asks us to imagine what happens when it's really easy for home-hacking everyday people to run fiber optic cabling throughout the house bridge fibre to ethernet.

Where it goes is the independent hacking together of everything: a convergence of cheap, mobile and hackable. Add to that the half-zillion open source code bases now populate the world of useful tools and building materials, and you have the ingredients -- if not yet the recipe -- for remaking infrastructure from the edges inward.

That edging inward is a movement that the phone company does not own, and can not own. And it won't just happen with wiring and wireless. It will happen with devices as well. The consumer electronics business will turn gradually in to the producer electronics business: a new category in which ordinary hackers far outnumber big manufacturers. In time, the few will follow the many, even as the many continue to follow the few.

Meaning that consumer electronics won't go away. It will just become the reciprocal of producer electronics. The two will work together. Because they'll have to. Those things that only large companies can do will continue to be done by those. And those things that can only be done by small companies and individuals will continue to be done by those. The difference is that the latter group will grow. A lot.

jon posted this at 3:05 PM
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