Peter Troxler

…also online

Urban Economic Development as Making Unfolds Its Potential

Presentation given at a seminar by “La Fabrique de la Cité” on the creation of value for the city and in the city in Lille on 16 September 2014.

Everyone is a Designer

Fab Labs, 3D Printing, the 3rd Industrial Revolution – and Their Impact (Possibly)

I gave this presentation (or indeed a very similar one) to audiences in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) and Aberdeen (Scotland, UK). A notes pdf is also available for more detailed information and further reading.

Seminar: Third Industrial Revolution

Jeremy Rifkin foresees a “Third Industrial Revolution” that is triggered by the convergence of the development of the Internet and the emergence of renewable energies. This Third Industrial Revolution is based on lateral structures (networks, co-operation) – as opposed to the hierarchical (centralized, top-down) structures of the 1st and 2n industrial revolutions. His main message…

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The Icons of the 3rd Industrial Revolution

Under the title ‘De revolutie in de maakindustrie’ I had the pleasure to open an afternoon packed with experts from that very revolution: Enrico Dini, italian architect and ‘the man who prints houses’, and Thomas Bossuyt who works as a sales engineer with LayerWise (the guys who printed that spring for positioning a telescope … and…

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Personal 3D Printing

Today’s issue of ‘The Next Wave of Manufacturing’ is all about how hobbyist 3D printers are not living up to their promise … or is it? Kiet Callies / Foter / CC BY-NC It is not a surprise that currently available hobby 3D-printers are a bit ‘finicky’, as Jessica Leber describes the printing process. I…

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The Next Wave of Manufacturing

2012 has literally been the year of all sorts of New Industrial Revolution prophecies. Jeremy Rifkin has popularized his idea of the Third Industrial Revolution and the shift to lateral power at the ‘Mission Growth’ conference in Brussels. Chris Anderson has written about the maker movement and how this would would be the New Industrial…

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Open Source Design: Disruption, Desire, Destiny?

At the Swiss Design Network Conference in Lugano, I gave this keynote on the impact of the 3rd industrial revolution on design. In this keynote I try two things: to relate open design to the wider context of these similar developments which in the view of Jeremy Rifkin constitute the ingredients for a new industrial…

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Open Knowledge Festival – Helsinki, 18-22 September 2012

There is another Open Knowledge event coming up — 18-22 September 2012 in Helsinki — and I’m a proud member of the advisory board and guest programme planner for a stream on Open Design / Hardware / Manufacturing & Making. This stream covers Open Design in all its various facets (from design as a blueprint…

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Commons-based Peer Production of Physical Gods — Is There Room for a Hybrid Innovation Ecology?

I’ll be addressing how Fab Labs are positioned around ‘open sourcing’ hardware, a territory hardly ever explored in research, maybe apart from the open design people such as Ronen Kadushin and the people around Kerstin Balka. The paper will then report a number of case studies where ‘open source’ in hardware really has happened. From…

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Designing a Business Model for the Next Digital Revolution: Personal Fabrication

First there was a digital revolution in computation (personal computer), then in communications (convergence and mobile phones). The next digital revolution, according to MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld (2005), is in the field of manufactured physical goods (personal fabrication). Gershenfeld and his colleagues have created so-called Fablabs around the world: fabrication laboratories, equipped with digital fabrication machines…

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