Postfully Yours

The digital divide is often talked about as a consumer phenomenon. And it’s true that bringing the resources of the digital world to those without access can have an incredible effect on peoples’ lives. But bridging that divide on the production side could have impacts that are just as far reaching.

In the digital world, we’ve recently seen an explosion of activity driven by the lego-like quality of the modern web. Thousands of features and tools are available and ready to be pieced together.

But all of this ends at the monitor’s edge. Most physical processes don’t allow connections, experimentation, or recombination. Merging the dynamism of the web with the scope and reach of physical production and delivery is potentially revolutionary. The era of mass production is ending as we enter a period of mass customization.

Print is a perfect example of the sort of light manufacturing task which will likely compose the first wave of this. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a rapid adoption of digital presses. But only now are we starting to see changes in the underlying processes. With the release of our API, we’re helping to open this more widely.

It’s exciting to imagine what’s going to be possible as this trend spreads through more and more areas of the ‘old economy’. A lot of neglected industries are rapidly going to get much more interesting.