What if you could someday put the manufacturing power of an automobile plant on your desktop? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the renowned MIT scientist and inventor, the next big thing is personal fabrication-the ability to design and produce your own products, in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics and industrial tools. Personal fabricators are about to revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago, and Fab shows us how.

That's the promise, and peril, of the third digital revolution, where anyone will be able to make (almost) anything Two digital revolutions--computing and communication--have radically transformed our economy and lives. A third digital revolution is here: fabrication. Today's 3D printers are only the start of a trend, accelerating exponentially, to turn data into objects: Neil Gershenfeld and his collaborators ultimately aim to create a universal replicator straight out of Star Trek. While digital fabrication promises us self-sufficient cities and the ability to make (almost) anything, it could also lead to massive inequality. The first two digital revolutions caught most of the world flat-footed, thanks to Designing Reality that won't be true this time.

This is about the nature of mathematical modelling, and the kinds of techniques that are useful for modelling. It is oriented towards simple efficient implementations on computers.