The Battle of Big Thinking

We listened to an interesting presentation from John Wilshire on the topic of "Big". He means the notion of mass production, mass consumption and the resulting mass media, where the goal is simply to have you "buy more" in a "big way". It's true. We've all been conditioned to think this way as that was one of the fundamental principles of 20th century industry. 

 

Things change in the 21st century, where technology, networking and software permits us to be anywhere, build anything and have relationships with anyone. Well, potentially, anyway. The result is that we do what we want and then cluster in affinity groups. 

 

These groups are increasingly less interested in "buying more" in a "big way" as they interests focus elsewhere. Wilshire proposes "Social Production", where manufacturing occurs on a lower, but more distributed scale. He describes at length the social constructs that permit the identification and development of solutions. But then the next step occurs: sharing the results. 

Social Production

View more presentations from John V Willshire.

 

He describes how 3D printing can be the end point for this process, where the ideas become real. The conclusion: Our Future = Social Media + Social Production.

 

Via Slideshare

A New Beginning and an End for Action Figures

A thoughtful article at Comic Book Bin forecasts both a bright and dark future for action figure collecting. Many people around the world collect action figures modeled after their favorite characters, and it's a big business. But, as the article suggests, what happens when people can print their own action figures? Or create a design the manufacturers did not?

They see a scenario developing similar to the music industry, where the control of digital content has essentially transferred to the public. Consider this:

What this means for existing toy manufacturers is that their stranglehold on action figure collectors may be near its end. When action figure collectors are offered an opportunity to produce for themselves toys that often are intentionally produced in limited quantities to boost demand, toy makers may find that their existing marketing strategies are becoming obsolete. The entire after market for action figures, as seen in auction sites and retailers artificially increasing the price of models may be affected by giving consumers more power

Would this mean the end of commercial action figures? Or the rise of many small manufacturers? Or perhaps even a lively open-source-style market for figures?

It will also create opportunities for budding model creators. Could you imagine creating a Batman action figure or statue based on a cover by Brian Bolland that DC Direct may never have thought of creating? These models could be sold and would probably be pirated. Of course, toy makers and license owners of properties would try to step in and argue that making custom action figures and distributing the 3D model for free is an infringement of their copyrights. This is what the music industry and Hollywood tries to argue when it comes to digital downloads. They will probably try to attack 3D scanning and 3D printing technology manufacturers, as they did with download sites.

This is just one more of the many social challenges we're going to see as a result of 3D technology landing on us. Enjoy!

Via Comic Book Bin