Open Source Hardware And Maker Spaces Make Sense For Libraries

On Monday, April 8th, Jason Griffey presented at Computers in Libraries on open source hardware (slides will be available on his website soon).  He is perhaps best known for his work on the Library Box, a portable device used for content distribution.  I have previously written about the Library Box on Infospace.

So why is open source hardware poised to garner the respect now held by open source software or perhaps even surpass it? 

The first reason is that hardware is constantly becoming better, faster and cheaper.  The more commonly known concept is Moore’s Law that states that the number of transistors on circuits doubles approximately every two years.  Lesser known is Koomey’s Law, stating that the energy required to do a computation halves approximately every year and a half.