Imagine the number of cycles microevolution that can be achieved throughout a single year.
Cell phones are commodity items, not modular case+fans+CPU+GPU+PSU+motherboard+X+Y+Z purchases. You can (and some markets do) fit $100k of product into an 8'x8' stall and have plenty of space left over. Cell phone plans are perfectly centralized, and can be purchased online or over the phone. At the same time, online reviews are essentially the only reasonable place to seek unbiased advice, and are plentiful.
This is a market demand that, while it may have reason to exist, could be filled by 10% of the current locations selling cell service & phones. Instead, T-Mobile needs a storefront, Verizon needs a storefront, Apple needs a storefront, and half a dozen adjacent electronics stores or electronic departments sell cell phones on the side, in every large strip mall or indoor shopping mall in America.
In a functional market economy, profitability is minimized through competition; It's a waste that we tolerate in order to incentivize performance. By 2013, the cell phone companies & retail established have established de facto agreement that it's better for them to plow profits into essentially purchasing large quantities of well-manned empty space in every major electronics store in the nation, rather than lower prices or improve their infrastructure.
Especially when mobile phone subsidies is becoming a big part of their income stream. That's like crack to them now, hard to turn away from that.
But if this DIY/3DP movement is going mainstream in the coming generation then they need to make a big move. Imagine if Radio Shack makes a comeback consolidating the parts market by buying up the likes of Sparkfun, Quirky, and IndieGogo while partnering with Digikey for retail distribution.
Then imagine they developing mobile apps that can quickly identify and give contextual information to individual parts so the average consumer hobbyist can be empowered to chase their dreams.
I would bet on that instead because empowering others will always be a better purpose. Otherwise they're going down like Sharper Image or Best Buy because Amazon is here coming to eat their lunch.
Nothing wrong with it though. This only sustains because there are more profitable industries there now.
I'd take "medium" density any day though. Enough density so people don't need to move miles daily, not enough density so people can't afford some healthy living space. NYC and SanFran are way over the top.
...but using the "depleting oil reserves" and other eco arguments to make people leave in what I see as much lower quality conditions is inhumane and cruel in my pov - just build good quality public transportation, make it electrical (even trains are efficient) and go all nuclear to power it all, putting up with all the eco-consequences of it ...or maybe Elon Musk's Hyperloop will redeem everything :)
I sympathise with your intent but that sounds like a sweatshop to me.
" three years in a dorm in SF - running your own Shanzen style mini fab company, no time wasters".
You will get hundreds of genuine people willing to do the sweatshop thing.
No, for one fundamental reason: The people in real sweatshops don't have any other realistic option. The people in the proposed complexes along the 101 would have the ability to say "screw this" and go do something else.
I once had the idea that wealth really means having options. I don't know if that's universally true, but it certainly applies here. Silicon Valley is fundamentally wealthier than the areas where sweatshops which are sweatshops spring up.
Having said that, I love being here (physicist at a local research institute), where there are places like Guanghua computer market, basically most electronics imaginable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guang_Hua_Digital_Plaza
Many of the things are still harder to get (e.g. I'd love to have in country source for the Atmel chips that are used in Arduinos), but loads of things are so cheap and ready to grab.
Just trying to get Taipei Hackerspace off the ground, to bridge the gap between the local opportunities and the vision that is quite often got imported by foreigners here. It's an explosive combination, I really want to help this forward, and see it to succeed. :)
Come visit sometime!
I'd love to come visit next time I'm around China. Send me an email and we'll connect?
Oh, and spend 'boatloads of money on overnight shipping' -- $65. How much is a programmer per hour in Silicon Valley?
You could also move to Thief River Falls :)
I like buying cheap junk from dealextreme, but when I need something reliable that'll be around for a while, I'm glad to pay more for something from a real company.
Also, SparkFun has a few pick&place and I know a few people with them around, being used to varying levels.
I laughed at that, even with the smiley. I live about 6 hours from Thief River Falls (home of DigiKey) and it's about -12F here right now at 7:30AM. Just checked the Thief River Falls weather and it's a balmy -24F there right now.
I don't think we'll be seeing a flood of Bay Area HN'ers moving here any time soon :-)
However, there's still no "3d printer equivalent" for electronics prototyping especially when using BGAs.
I've paid way more than $65 for overnight shipping from Digikey, Mouser, Arrow NAC, etc. Especially when ordering from multiple distributors (for some reason it always seems that my kits end up being a 90:10 split between Digikey:Mouser).
If I am an enthusiastic DIY'er, I want my parts now, not tomorrow.
Also I wonder where Digikey gets their "reliable" parts from.
As you say, there are clear cases where this cheap overseas model isnt going to work. But to dismiss them completely is like saying Kickstarter is no good for video games because AAA publishing houses already exist.
Low volume cheap prototyping or niche manufacturing is an area ripe for disruption. Actually its not even disruption since AFAIK there are no established players (in the West at least).
People like the OP's Maker seem to be driving the way for low cost, low volume electronics. 3D printing seems to be slowly leading the way towards cheap custom molds for enclosures. Once the two meet....
Personally I welcome the revolution.
That isn't a fair shot, though. The Chinese national has an unfair advantage due to the order of magnitude wage differential.
Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of money on overnight shipping (and get the order in before _ pm) or... well... there is no other option as pending time going to Jameco or Halted would likely be wasted, especially with even slightly uncommon or specialized parts.
In Shenzhen, however, everything is within reach and ridiculously fast. All of the factories and assembly houses are there and they even have malls that contain just about every electronics part you can imagine so if you need some rare IC you are almost guaranteed to have it the same day. Not to mention the EE communities like bbs.eetop.cn which contain not only software that is almost impossible to find through English channels (stuff that is prohibitively expensive specifically), but also many many datasheets and documentation that is usually under NDA and can sometimes be impossible to get if you can't convince the manufacturer that you might buy tens or hundreds of thousands of chips in the future.
What strikes me is how practical this guy's setup is. He isn't a Maker, he is a hobbyist manufacturer. I don't often see DIY pick n places and other more industrial manufacturing equipment this side of the Pacific (although this may just be a result of my ignorance).