Virtual Local Manufacturing Communities

Online Simulations of Future Workshop Systems

William Sims Bainbridge

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781948580748
• eBook ISBN: 9781948580731
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future.

Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis.

This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.

CHAPTER 1

Virtual Exploration of Real Possibilities

Computer-controlled manufacturing technologies, combined with information technologies capable of supporting new forms of social organization, have the potential to take humanity far beyond the industrial revolution, to an economy in which many products of value in daily life are produced again locally in small workshops. Large corporations will still be significant but playing somewhat different roles. They will provide much of the machinery used in local manufacturing, the computer-aided design software used to personalize each product, and the communication systems that support cooperation between people and technologies. It seems likely that some categories of products will be suitable for a franchise system, in which a multinational corporation will set standards and provide methods, working through legally established relationships with a system of locally owned workshops. Imagination can explore a variety of possibilities, but for the past two decades a virtual online experiment has taken place from which insights and ideas may be derived: massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

Over four decades ago, a leading innovator of information technology advocated the use of advanced electronic communication systems to support the return of population from the cities of the industrial era to towns and villages. His name was Peter Goldmark, and he was largely responsible for the development of long-playing phonographs and had contributed to the development of color television. After retirement from CBS laboratories in 1971, Wikipedia reports,

he pursued research on the use of communication technologies to provide services like teleconferencing and remote medical consultations to people in rural areas. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation in the early 1970s, the “New Rural Society Project” was housed at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., and conducted pilot studies across the state in Eastern Connecticut’s relatively rural Windham region.¹

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) online grant database does not confirm its support, and another source implies that it may have been a small contribution within “generous funding from the federal Departments of Housing and Urban Development (over $700,000) and the Transportation ($150,000) and the National Science Foundation.”²

In a 1972 Scientific American article predicting the development of today’s networked society, Goldmark noted, “Cities exist largely because they enhance communications.”³ In a cascade of speeches and even in the Congressional Record, he argued that large cities waste energy, notably through daily commuting to and from work, and that they promote crime and disintegrate social relationships.⁴ Were he alive today, he would rejoice in the widespread adoption of Internet, complain that society had failed to rebuild local communities, and quite possibly suggest that multiplayer online games were valuable simulations of the future he hoped would come.

Whether abbreviated MMORPG, or more efficiently if imprecisely MMO, massively multiplayer online role-playing games attracted millions of players and billions of dollars to play activities that focused on adventure stories and simulated combat. But in the background of most popular examples was a virtual economy incorporating simulated gathering of raw materials and production of valuable goods. These were not limited to medieval-style weapons and body armor, but included foods, fashionable clothing, transportation vehicles, and even houses and the furniture to fill them. Often, players bought and sold such manufactured items through an in-game marketplace or traded them among groups of friends. MMOs are persistent worlds, the oldest one analyzed here having flourished for over 20 years, and players were encouraged to create enduring social groups, typically called guilds, which perhaps not coincidentally was the name for professional societies in the decades prior to the industrial revolution. In April 2008, the author of this book created a guild named Science specifically to hold a scientific conference in World of Warcraft, the most popular MMO which had about 12,000,000 subscribers, at which 120 academics discussed the significance of virtual worlds, leading to publication of a conventional book on that topic.⁵ At the time of the last report, that guild was still active although no longer serving research functions, thus one example of how virtual social systems can endure and evolve.

On the basis of intensive study of 30 MMOs, this book will explore several dimensions of online simulation of local production. Although not designed by academics to test scientific theories, they serve as intellectually rich simulations, all the more informative because they were designed by smart, technologically sophisticated enthusiasts who not only had their own ideas about human cooperation, but also learned from each other and from the players who responded with varying levels of enthusiasm to the designers’ innovations. Many academic studies have found real merit in research on MMOs, identifying many connections to real-world socioeconomic systems.⁶ Using Jay Forester’s academic simulations of cities as his classical example, Matthew Wells has argued that even seriously intended academic computer models blur the distinction between fact and fiction and that many of the more complex computer games should be taken seriously.⁷

Much of the research effort invested to date in small-scale distributed manufacturing has employed the conceptualization of the maker movement and focused on its educational potential, whereas also suggesting that very practical benefits could result. Wikipedia describes this movement as “a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture.”⁸ “Literally meaning ‘do it yourself,’ the DIY ethic promotes the idea that anyone is capable of performing a variety of tasks rather than relying on paid specialists.”⁹ However, the long-term result is likely to be a workforce collaborating along a spectrum from amateur to professional, not “do it yourself” but “do it ourselves.”

For example, a June 12, 2015, press release of the NSF was titled “New paths to innovation and learning through DIY technologies” and announced:

Today, the nation of makers proves it has no borders, as do-it-yourself engineers, inventors and tinkerers of all ages and backgrounds converge at the National Maker Faire. The National Science Foundation (NSF) directly supports many of the exhibitors—known as “makers”—participating in the faire, with even more exhibitors using NSF-funded tools and technologies, such as 3-D printing and computer-aided design. The faire is a kickoff event for the National Week of Making June 12–18, which celebrates the growing wave of innovators enabled by access to new resources and knowledge, known as the maker movement.¹⁰

A year earlier, an NSF news release titled “Engineering for All” praised the contributions of professionals to the liberation of amateurs:

Today’s engineers are helping to drive many of the technologies that make making possible—from 3-D printers to user-friendly design software. As high fabrication costs and complicated computer programs become a thing of the past, young inventors and DIY (do-it-yourself) enthusiasts can focus on what really matters: bringing their ideas to life.¹¹

A prominent method for small-scale manufacture is 3-D printing or additive manufacture, originally a form of rapid prototyping, that can efficiently produce small numbers of products and change their exact specifications easily. The term “small scale” may be misleading, because a huge amount of effort has been invested in developing these technologies, and if designed and organized well these methods can manufacture large numbers of products, but with highly flexible designs that can be customized for particular users. Already by 2013, the NSF reportedly had made 600 grants totaling $200,000,000 in research on additive manufacture, ­primarily through its Engineering Directorate.¹² An early example of widespread local manufacturing using additive manufacture is the ­production of unique assistive technologies, such as artificial hands ­customized to fit the arms of specific disabled people.¹³

This example is analogous to the virtual production of body armor in historical and fantasy action-oriented online games. Generally, the user is able to customize the avatar, in many cases given the opportunity to set its body size and shape. In making a virtual helmet, it is generally taken for granted that it will fit the already-determined virtual head of the avatar, so customization is generally ignored with respect to its dimensions. However, different classes of avatars are allowed to wear only particular kinds of armor, for example, steel versus leather, which require working with different simulated materials and often at different simulated machines. As is true also for academic research that employs computer simulation, some parts of a dynamic process are represented more precisely than others. We can distinguish explicit simulation, using algorithms that represent all the processes in realistic detail, from implicit simulation in which only the input and output are accurately represented. The commercial online games use a mixture of implicit and explicit, thus rendering some aspects of simulated manufacturing more precise than others.

Additive manufacture is a good example, both because its value for the future economy is clear and because it typically employs computer systems not very different from simulation graphics software to produce its products. But there are at least two other kinds of local manufacture that may be significant in the future: (1) revival of historic workshop production of everyday items like furniture and dishware and (2) creation of community-related information resources. This book emphasizes simulated manufacture of physical objects, but information products are also covered, notably schematics or instructions about how to manufacture physical products.

Arguably, mass production of many durable household items, and also personal clothing, was historically connected with a particular phase in economic growth, beginning well over a century ago.¹⁴ Very prosperous families, however, often filled their homes with antique furniture and their kitchens with distinctive dishes and wore highly customized clothing, at least for formal occasions. If society sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• halftitle
• title
• Copyright
• Abstract
• Contents
• 01_Chapter 1
• 02_Chapter 2
• 03_Chapter 3
• 04_Chapter 4
• 05_Chapter 5
• 06_Chapter 6
• 07_Chapter 7
• 08_Glossary
• 09_Bios
• 10_Index
• 11_Adpage
• backcover