Saul Griffith, Howtoons
Date: Tuesday, March 15
Time: 5:30pm - 6:15pm
Location: California Ballroom B
TrackBack
Vannevar Bush outlined in his essay "as we might think" the memex, a device for recording the information and the how of everything we do. To a degree, the Internet met this vision, but more successfully for software and ideas that hardware and objects.
Open source software has had a major impact on society and industry. Open source hardware, however, is a term that means different things to different people and doesn't really exist in practice.
Why has collaborative, open, hardware development not happened already the way it has with open source software?
There are platform and standardization issues, which with lower cost and more advanced CAD & CAM are becoming simpler. Principally though, the problem is interface. Where is the sourceforge for atoms? The operating system for compiling stuff?
Squid:Labs is developing an open design platform for hobbyists, small businessess, students, designers, and industry to collaborate, share, personalize, mass customize, and ultimately hack the physical objects and products around us. As has been famously said: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." We have an itch for better, more personalised, hardware and welcome people to join us in scratching it.
