The Future is Fabulous: Datascaping, Digital Fabrication and Design Futurism

Fabbing (personal digital fabrication) is a collection of intertwined—and still immature—production and information technologies. Fab seems to promise an empowerment of every person to design and manufacture his or her own products. But how this technology will actually accomplish such a goal remains fuzzy.

The Future is Fabulous investigates fabbing in light of our advancing datascape (the mass of digital information modeling human behavior), and explores fab’s effect on designing, buying, and interacting with products. It considers current trends such as targeted marketing and mass customization (selecting the colors and features of a Timbuk2 messenger bag, for example) as early stages in the fab trajectory.

The project seeks to understand the rhetorical, practical, and epistemological changes embedded in a technology that promises to empower consumers and designers alike.