Interview with Tim O'Reilly

By Christian Stöcker at Spiegel International (04.12.2006) :

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your name is closely connected to two of the catchphrases of our times: "Open Source" and "Web 2.0." What's the next buzzword you'll invent?

O'Reilly: The next big thing we're working on is wrapped up in a new magazine we're doing, called "Make." We're really focussing on how computing is starting to interact with the physical world, like with custom manufacturing. What we're all seeing is a huge amount of hacker activity around making things. There's a lot of disposable hardware now. People are now on their 3rd or 4th digital camera, and what do they do with the old one? They can re-use it. We also have all sorts of custom manufacturing devices, like laser cutters and 3D-printers. All this stuff is about the same price point that typesetters were in the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the focus is shifting back from software to the real world?

O'Reilly: Yes. We're entering an era of custom manufacturing. There's synthetic biology -- where custom manufacturing will extend down to chemical processes and materials as well as electronics and physical goods. Not to mention we have the ability to mass-produce things more easily in some part of the world where there's relatively cheap labor in relatively small units. People are getting increasingly sophisticated tools for simulation and design. Like when people are building things in "Second Life" or in Sketchup on Google Earth. The tools of design of virtual things that can become physical things are getting much more democratized, much more widely spread. For example, there are a couple of services where you can get your avatar from "Second Life" printed out in 3D. I think that's one of the big frontiers.