MakerBot and Deletionism
I had never heard of desktop manufacturing before I began reading the on-line drafts of Kevin Carson’s bracing Organization Theory . But when I read Kevin’s discussion of the concept, I was floored—and very excited. MakerBot is a new (at least to me) addition to the industry. And for anyone interested in a decentralized manufacturing model, its arrival on the scene ought to be of some interest for its own sake. But I want to use its appearance as an occasion for a rant on another topic. A few minutes ago, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales posted a Facebook status update alerting people to MakerBot’s existence. He wrote that he was surprised by the absence of a Wikipedia article about the company, which struck him (surely rightly) as doing exciting things. I decided to look on Wikipedia for an article on MakerBot. Not surprisingly, someone who’s Wales’s friend on Facebook (or, perhaps, if his status updates also appear on Twitter, one of his Twitter follower) created a stub regarding the c...