ALAPPUZHA: Kerala is marching towards becoming India’s topmost F-literacy (‘F’ for fabrication) state. It has also become the first state in India to sign on to the global Fab City movement. The progress achieved by Kerala in this sector was lauded by the US digital journal GlobalPost in an article titled ‘Kerala embraces Fab Labs and an ‘Internet of Things Future’ on Thursday. A Fab City is a new urban model for locally productive and globally connected self-sufficient cities.
In a Fab City, citizens are empowered to be the masters of their own destiny, and a more ecological system is developed because the movement of materials and energy consumption are drastically reduced. The Fab City has been initiated by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, the Massac-husetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Centre for Bits and Atoms and the Fab Foundation. It operates within the Fab Lab network, using it as a global infrastructure and knowledge source to bring changes to how we work, live and play in cities.
Fab Labs enable invention by providing access to tools for digital fabrication. Designs and processes developed in Fab Labs can be protected and sold if an inventor chooses, but should remain available for individuals to use and learn from. The journal said Kerala was nearing a revolution in digital fabrication and had achieved progress in implementing projects such as personal fabrication, Fab Lab installations, cow mesh advancements and Fab Lab 2.0 adaptations that could make Malayalis dream about the 'Internet of Things Future.’
Kerala joined the Fab City movement in 2015 with the motto ‘Make what they use, and use what they make’ introduced by professor Neil Gershenfeld of MIT to make people comfortable in using high-tech tools. Gershenfeld himself had come to Kerala last year to inaugurate it. The movement has a network of about 1,000 Fab Labs around the world. Kerala has introduced digital fabrication by equipping students with 10,000 Raspberry Pis (a credit card-sized computer) and expansion of mini Fab Lab facilities to at least 20 engineering colleges across the state. The journal applauded Malayali students who programmed a Raspberry Pi to keep track of which government officials were showing up for work.
Mr Varun Geethamony, technical officer, Kerala Start-up Mission, who was quoted by the journal, told this newspaper that Kerala was on the verge of entering the era of ‘Internet of Things Future’ and was upfront working on Fab 2.0 (a kind of Fab Lab that can facilitate another Fab Lab). A community-owned WiFi mesh, or cow-mesh was on the anvil. With this, people who don’t have Internet access can get information about their community, share ideas and post complaints in WiFi chatrooms.
