Free Makers by Cory Doctorow

or out-innovated. What you people are making has an edge because it’s you making it, very bespoke and distinctive. I think it will take some time for the world to emerge an effective competitor to these goods, provided that you can build an initial marketplace mass-interest in them. There aren’t enough people out there who know how to combine all the things you’ve combined here. The system makes it hard to sell anything above the marginal cost of goods, unless you have a really innovative idea, which can’t stay innovative for long, so you need continuous invention and re-invention too. You two fellows appear to be doing that. I don’t know anything definitive about the aesthetic qualities of your gadgets, nor how useful they’ll be, but I do understand their distinctiveness, so that’s why I’m here.”
    It was longer than all the speeches he’d delivered since arriving, put together. Suzanne nodded and made some notes. Perry looked him up and down.
    “You’re, what, an ex-B-school prof from Cornell, right?”
    “Yes, for a few years. And I ran a company for a while, doing import-export from emerging economy states in the former Soviet bloc.”
    “I see,” Perry said. “So you’re into what, a new company every 18 months or something?”
    “Oh no,” Tjan said, and he had a little twinkle in his eye and the tiniest hint of a smile. “Oh no. Every six months. A year at the outside. That’s my deal. I’m the business guy with the short attention span.”
    “I see,” Perry said. “Kettlewell didn’t mention this.”
    At the junkyard, Tjan wandered around the Elmo-propelled Smart car and peered at its innards, watched the Elmos negotiate their balance and position with minute movements and acoustic signals. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “You guys aren’t temperamentally suited to doing just one thing.”
    Lester laughed. “He’s got you there, dude,” he said, slapping Perry on the shoulder.
    Suzanne got Tjan out for dinner that night. “My dad was in import-export and we travelled a lot, all over Asia and then the former Soviets. He sent me away when I was 16 to finish school in the States, and there was no question but that I would go to Stanford for business school.”
    “Nice to meet a fellow Californian,” she said, and sipped her wine. They’d gone to one of the famed Miami deco restaurants and the fish in front of her was practically a sculpture, so thoroughly plated it was.
    “Well, I’m as Californian as...”
    “...as possible, under the circumstances,” she said and laughed. “It’s a Canadian joke, but it applies equally well to Californians. So you were in B-school when?”
    “Ninety eight to 2001. Interesting times to be in the Valley. I read your column, you know.”
    She looked down at her plate. A lot of people had read the column back then. Women columnists were rare in tech, and she supposed she was good at it, too. “I hope I get remembered as more than the chronicler of the dot-com boom, though,” she said.
    “Oh, you will,” he said. “You’ll be remembered as the chronicler of this—what Kettlewell and Perry and Lester are doing.”
    “What you’re doing, too, right?”
    “Oh, yes, what I’m doing too.”
    A robot rollerbladed past on the boardwalk, turning the occasional somersault. “I should have them build some of those,” Tjan said, watching the crowd turn to regard it. It hopped onto and off of the curb, expertly steered around the wandering couples and the occasional homeless person. It had a banner it streamed out behind it: CAP’N JACKS PAINTBALL AND FANBOAT TOURS GET SHOT AND GET WET MIAMI KEY WEST LAUDERDALE.
    “You think they can?”
    “Sure,” Tjan said. “Those two can build anything. That’s the point: any moderately skilled practitioner can build anything these days, for practically nothing. Back in the old days, the blacksmith just made every bit of ironmongery everyone needed, one piece at a time, at