I’ve waited 4 ½ years for this book. I think of this as the third book in the trilogy: The Long Tail, Free, and now Makers. When Free came out I wrote that I thought that the next book would be about open source hardware. Now we know this was correct, but so much has happened in the intermediate 4 1/2 years that it now seems somewhat mundane. I was at the most recent Detroit Maker Fair and there were 30K people. The maker movement has serious momentum. If you’re unaware of the Makers this is an excellent introduction, but it may be kind of old news.
His argument for giving away the design but charging for hardware is unsettling. There seems to be an equally compelling argument for the reverse; that is, giving away the hardware and charging for the design. He’s in touch with what’s mostly working in 2012. However, it’s at odds with what worked in the past. I kept thinking about IBM and the PC. And no satisfying theory really justifies any choice of business model.
Finally, he argues that this is great for America and probably disastrous for China. Design will be all that’s left of manufacturing and America will own that. I agree. But the justification for this belief is far from satisfying. My reading of Christensen suggests that controlling the low end of the market allows you to move upscale market … The dynamics are complicated …