The digital revolution is over. Next?

A factory of one's own. No, no one has been hitting the bong again. The next big change will be about manufacturing. Anyone with a PC will be able to build anything just by hitting 'print.'

Sound a little too utopian to believe? Well, imagine a machine with the ability to manufacture anything. Now imagine that machine in your living room. What would you build first? Would you start a business? Would you ever buy anything retail again? According to MIT physicist Neil Gershenfeld, it's not too early to think about these questions, because that machine, which he calls a personal fabricator, is not so far off - or so far-fetched - as you might think.

Five years ago the National Science Foundation awarded the CBA $14 million to build a manufacturing lab full of futuristic hardware. That includes a nanobeam writer that can etch microscopic patterns on metal, and a supersonic waterjet cutter that generates 60,000 pounds of water pressure, enough to shear through almost any material. The CBA factory can churn out anything, from the tiniest semiconductor to an entire building.

Tomorrow's hot tech gear today

Gershenfeld formed the class to introduce his students to the machinery and give them an opportunity he had always craved himself. "In high school I desperately wanted to go to trade school, where we could weld and fix cars," says Gershenfeld, whose fast-talking manner and bobbing head of unruly curls give him the classic aura of a frazzled professor. "People said, 'Because you're smart, you'll have to go to the other school.' I could never figure out why. Now, every semester, students are begging to get in."

His students have invented both serious and whimsical creations, from a $10 computer to an alarm clock you have to wrestle to prove you're awake. Like computing before it, Gershenfeld says, this kind of personal manufacturing is coming into the home. He doesn't mean designing a product on a PC and sending the plans off to a plant in China. He means you'll have a setup right in your house.

The all-in-one of the future

Today your all-in-one device prints, scans, faxes and copies. Tomorrow it will cut, score, etch and sew. Want a new dining room chair? You'll design it on a PC and press PRINT, and your personal fabricator will create it for you right before your eyes. Just make sure tray No. 2 has enough wood.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393124/index.htm?postversion=2006110706