It all started when Chris Anderson wrote an article for WIRED titled "In The Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are The New Bits in which he took the position that, in effect, "making" constituted a new paradigm that would reshape the way manufacturing works. Along came feisty blogger Joel Johnson of Gizmodo who penned a withering rebuttal titled Atoms Are Not Bits; WIRED is not a Business Magazine.
We at MAKE are a little prejudiced toward the Andersonian model, maybe because it makes us look like heroes. Vanity aside, there's certainly a lot of compelling evidence that we're on to something. Look at commercial ventures, like Makerbot and Adafruit, born of an open-source maker ethos that does not at all resemble the way regular businesses operate -- even small businesses. Still, we're all about a spirited debate. To this end, we've invited Joel to come and make his case. For the home team: MAKE magazine's founder and publisher, Dale Dougherty! Click through to follow the scrum.
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