There was a profound moment during the Olympics opening ceremony. Sir Tim Berners Lee emerged typing at a neXT cube and the phrase ‘THIS IS FOR EVERYONE’ flashed up in lights around the stadium, and appeared as a message on Twitter. It was profound for a number of reasons: there were the words and who was saying them, and the way director Danny Boyle brought to life two major revolutions – the industrial and the digital – since the 18th century. But the moment also hinted at a third revolution – the one we are about to enter. This is where 3D printing merges the first and the second into an age of digital personal manufacturing. We will all become makers.
It has always moved me that Sir Tim chose to give away the thing that underpins so much of modern life, the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol or ‘http’ we see at the start of web addresses. We always talk of inventors ‘giving us’ things, but all too often this is shorthand for them inventing something and then locking it away behind patents. Sir Tim has never tried to block access, apply for a patent or demand a licence fee. His was the most amazing ‘open’ gift to humankind.
