The First Post-Industrial Technology?

I was sat with Neil Ellis one lunchtime last week, we were discussing how and where mass-production techniques could be applied to software.

I explained to Neil why I belived that this couldn't be done.

I feel that the point of mass-production is to reduce the cost of producing copies of a prototype.

In car manufacturing, for example, even the simplest of prototypes for the cheapest of cars cost upwards of £100,000. Millions of pounds will be spent fitting out a production line. After applying mass-production techniques, the copies will be sold for a twentieth of the cost of the original.

With software we are in a very different space, the cost of mass-production is essentially zero. All the cost is in the prototype.

Building a car prototype involves designing components, testing them, putting them together and testing the whole. Engineer will often design a car prototype re-using components from other vehicles and will design components to be re-used. Does this sound familiar?

The advent of devices that will print components and eventually nanofactories mean that the cost of mass-production will shrink down to purely that of the raw materials and the energy.

This means that we may find that trends in software development may be pointers to the future based on these new devices. I wonder what an open-source washing machine will look like?