Colloquium WHAT: Neil Gershenfeld (Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT) Mel King (Director, South End Technology Center, Boston): "Personal Fabrication" WHEN: Monday, May 3, 2004, 4:00–5:00 PM EST WHERE: Bartos Theatre, MIT Media Lab (E15) SUMMARY: In the laboratory it's now possible to print functional systems, including materials for logic, sensing, actuation, display, and three-dimensional structures. Integrating these capabilities will create a machine that can make any machine, including itself. The relationship between such a personal fabricator and today's industrial machine tools is analogous to that between a personal computer and a mainframe, promising to bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world. While this remains a long-term research goal, in the short term it is possible to approximate it with accessible tools for engineering in space on the scale of microns and in time on the scale of microseconds. We will discuss early embodiments of these, and emerging insights into how and why they will be used coming from deployments around the world. RESEARCH REPORT: Amy Sun, Amon Millner: "Fab Labs" MIT Media Laboratory Home Page | Events Main Index