“Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they’re ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other institutions and handed over to regular folks. The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both participation and participants in everything digital – the long tail of bits.

 Now the same is happening to manufacturing – the long tail of things”

Will the Internet have the same impact on the manufacturing of physical goods that it as had on the virtual world? Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and the author of The Long Tail, makes a very strong argument that this will happen in his latest article: “In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms are the New Bits”.

With the growing popularity of crowdsourcing and other forms of web-based collaboration as well as the widespread availability of fast, flexible, and low cost manufacturing in China, I strongly believe it’s only a matter of time before this trend goes mainstream in almost any industry imaginable.

And sooner rather than later.

“The tools of factory production….. are now available to available to individuals, in batches as small is a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop.”