![]() While corporations like Microsoft and Oracle were employing droves of programmers to homogenize products for the mass market, these technological craftsmen were working on a personal scale. I hadn't thought of it this way until I read Neil Gershenfeld's new book, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, but I was witnessing the revival of a spirit that had been fading since the Industrial Revolution: that of the artisan. ![]() Legions of amateur programmers were creating and distributing, largely for their own amusement, a multitude of virtual machines. With the chirps and squawks of modem tones, I could download animated clocks, perpetual calendars, a gizmo that made my keyboard clack and ding like an old Smith Corona typewriter. It wasn't just words and pictures that had been lurking out there. I felt like an African bushman turning on a radio for the first time. So much had been happening beyond my awareness. More definitive sources of information-how to combat an infestation of pine-tip moths, join two boards with a dado joint or locate the great nebula in Orion-resided among a far-flung collection of computers called Gopher servers, a precursor to the World Wide Web. Spirited, unruly discussions on everything from quantum physics to punk rock ebbed and flowed across a borderless electronic forum called Usenet. Thirteen years ago I unboxed my new Apple Macintosh, plugged it into the phone line, and discovered the existence of another world.
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