The Digital Bespoke
If you're interested in reading more than a 1000-2000 words of my writing at a time, I've also written a book. Buy it here.
Published in 2023, The Digital Bespoke? is about mass customization, 3D printing, human bodies, and the step towards digitally built objects made to individual specifications. The author argues that the modes of customization offered by digital fabrication and mass production have more in common with their industrial predecessors than with craft-based customization.
Using case studies of historical and current practices from Europe, Africa, and North America to ground her theory, she investigates where digital fabrication technologies have developed from and how their uses differ from existing modes of production. Digital fabrication and mass customization are concepts encompassing broad ecosystems of technologies and practices. Both are increasingly implemented and hyped. As such, it is imperative to address not just their potential, but their challenges.
Written for a scholarly audience and for design practitioners concerned with the social and political impacts of digital fabrication and mass customization, this book will be a useful reference point for students and researchers in digital and analogue design, technology, and material culture.
Buying The Digital Bespoke? Promises and Pitfalls of Mass Customization directly from its publisher, Routledge, benefits me. If you have javascript turned on in your browser and use the links on this page to get to the Routledge website, I'll also get an affiliate payment on top of the usual royalties. Academic books tend to be low earners, so the affiliate payment makes a difference. Plus, you get the pleasure of not buying it from Amazon.
