3 ms·
Well, like so many other things, it's field-dependent. :-) If you're working in software, you don't even need a garage: a dorm room or studio apartment, a lapt
by ajdecon 14y ago
Well, like so many other things, it's field-dependent. :-)
If you're working in software, you don't even need a garage: a dorm room or studio apartment, a laptop, and a few thousand dollars to pay for web hosting, will fill your need for physical equipment. I think that one of the great achievements of the past few decades has been the invention of an entire field of technical endeavor in which the base costs are so low.
But not all innovation is in software, and it's good to get a reminder that most fields have substantial equipment materials and equipment costs. A lab doing electronics, biotechnology, energy research, and many other totally necessary things has much higher requirements.
When I was doing microfluidics work in grad school, I was doing some of the cheapest microfabrication research out there. All I needed was a continuous supply of photoresist ($800/L), some decent-quality silicon wafers ($200/pk of 20), access to a high-resolution transparency printer for masks ($150/print), silicone plastic for making devices ($50/lb), and a good fluorescence microscope ($50,000 or so). Oh, and access to a clean room with about $1,000,000 worth of equipment, but that was shared and I don't know what our "rent" for access was...
Edit: costs estimated from the Internet and 2yr-old memories, but I think they're pretty close.
- polymathist 14y agoWhat I find most exciting is that in the coming years, the technologies that right now only seem possible in big labs might experience a revolution– might acheive the ease and cheapness that software development has today. Some examples: Fab@Home for 3d printing http://www.fabathome.org/ http://www.fabathome.org/, Arduino for hardware hacking http://www.arduino.cc/ http://www.arduino.cc/, and BioBricks for genome hacking http://biobricks.org/ http://biobricks.org/. This article really struck me as a fascinating example of garage-based genome hacking that turned into something really useful. http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-09/are-genome-hackers-future-biotech http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-09/are-genome-hac...
- 6ren 14y agoAnother advantage of a "lab" is interaction with other bright people in the field. It's a key benefit of YC; Jobs designed the pixar building to enhance this; many great software ideas came out of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC; and I've also experienced it myself at my old compsci dept.
- dredmorbius 14y agoThe Internet has, if not replace, then extended that metaphor considerably. Or at least it does when people with a common interest can reach out and find one another. One of my huge frustrations with so-called "social media" is that they frequently make just this sort of interaction very difficult. People who empathize similarly can reach out and like one another. However, people who can actually GSD need to wade through a ton of noise in search of signal. Even old Usenet did better (charters and cancelbots FTW). This is one of the reasons why topically-organized sites (Reddit, HN, etc.) do far better for communications in my book.
- alexhawket 14y agoI came across this post yesterday about using Ponoko's, relatively inexepensive, laser cutting service for micro-fluidics: http://nznano.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/simple-laser-cut-millimicrofluidics.html http://nznano.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/simple-laser-cut-millim...
- ajdecon 14y agoHey, that's really cool! Thanks for posting the link. I wonder what kind of resolution Ponoko can get, and what the pricing on the parts in the post were. I don't have a ton of experience with acrylic microfluidics -- I mostly did soft lithography with PDMS -- but this could be a cool alternative to a institutional cutter for small shops/labs.