The argument of mass production versus distributed production at this stage of the game, in my opinion, is a false dichotomy.  Personally, and ideologically, I lean towards distributed production, but I do not think that this has to be at the expense of mass production models of manufacturing.  Mass production will always have a place in the realm of local industry and manufacturing.

But the important point to keep in mind here is the real dichotomy between the two.  Mass production technologies have been in place for at least the past 80 to 100 years.  Distributed fabrication is just now emerging.  What we really need is to focus our energies and forces on is how to get distributed fabrication across the theoretical chasm; even us early adopters have limited access to the technologies and know-how we need to really launch the revolution.  We just haven’t quite gotten to the point where this is really easy to put together.

Once we start to shorten the path to adoption, the relationship between mass production and distributed fabrication will become clearer.  As it stands now, there are too many questions floating around out there for us to properly address this.  How will the everyday functioning of distributed fabrication work?  What will the network effect of distributed design be like once our fabricators are capable of, quite literally, downloading designs from the network and churning out prototypes on site?  How can this be then put to use for producing energy, water, and food?

These are just a few of the questions I have.  Before we get too far ahead of ourselves in this debate, let’s concentrate on the things that will  make the biggest impact in the least amount of time.  We are still too far away from the interface between mass production and distributed fabrication to tackle this with anything other than purely hypothetical models.