Watch Naomi Wu on YouTube. Look beyond her jarring aesthetic, and you’ll get to see the process of building something from idea to prototype and even production

Watch Naomi Wu on YouTube. Look beyond her jarring aesthetic, and you’ll get to see the process of building something from idea to prototype and even production in China, specifically Shenzhen. It genuinely makes me happy that a place like that exists, but sad that there doesn’t seem to be any place like it anywhere else; certainly not in the west. If you wanted to build a 3D printer from scratch, they have what are functionally large indoor malls selling every component you could possibly need. The people at these shops all know their stuff, and the whole place is just buzzing with genuine makers. And for production it seems as though everyone knows someone with a machine shop and an injection molding setup. For all of the talk of China’s decline, I wouldn’t count someone out with a place like Shenzhen; the west has nothing like it. Silicon Valley would be so much better socketed into an agile manufacturing juggernaut like that.