I think Gershenfeld was a little early, but high quality, sophisticated personal fabrication is here.

This is important because bioplastics are so tensile.

Ideas for another week of material?

Programmable matter, nanoscale self-assembly, AI material design

And given that I see neither woodworking nor welding, I'd argue that the course should be renamed to "How to make some things (most of which require a computer)".

Lex Fridmen has a podcast with the professor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF35Udv1DBU

Also, the class documentation itself is not where the "cool" stuff is, it's in all the student documentation. Here is a list of all the students in this past years FabAcademy: https://fabacademy.org/2025/people.html

And here are some highlights for this years final projects: https://fabacademy.org/2025/highlights.html

And what I always really liked where the weekly highlights as well (I don't have a link handy at the moment, I'd often make notes for myself of different projects.)

This is like one of those 10 countries in 10 days tours of Europe. The next step is to get good at one of those skills, which takes weeks to months. But time is too tight in college for that.

https://howtogrowalmostanything.notion.site/htgaa25

This is an interesting list and it might even make you super valuable in a particular scrappy kind of startup scene, but it's far from what I'd consider a list of skills that you'd call "make almost anything."

There is a shocking lack of anything foundational or structural here. No wood-working, no metal fabrication, no plumbing, nothing involving concrete or clay. The view of "almost anything" is very, very narrow.

Someone might say that there are too many things to learn if you take a much broader view, but I think that's mostly because our tech sector culture nearly completely devalues the skills and experiences of anyone over 40.

People prop up the "stuck in his ways" greybeard trope too often. Even for software development, where having learned C on Windows in 1995 wouldn't prepare you for Rust in 2025, the particular programming language syntax is such a small part of what it means to be a software developer. But for some reason, in the last 15 years, the prevailing opinions seem to think you have no hope if you haven't been using Language X since inception, so who the hell do you think you are applying for any jobs with "only" a few years of experience in LangX after 20 years of experience building successful projects in Several Similar LangYs?

But beyond programming, there are so many skills that just don't age at all. Being good at calculus and linear algebra never goes out of style. If you know how to weld or machine metal or build things out of wood or pour concrete, that never changes. And there are huge overlaps and synergies between the "trade" skills, if you apply a fundamental physics layer underneath.

So, if you give it some time, and a certain magpie obsession with learning new things, by the time a person reaches 40 or 50, they can conceivably have a basic understanding of almost everything. At which point, they become a super-powered project manager.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”

The price of getting custom PCBs from China plummeted in the past decade, but just now exploded in price due to tariffs. Nuts!

Would be a great opportunity for a US startup to fill the gap!