All of these events, to one degree or another, helped to galvanize the local technology community in these cities and demonstrate that building software-based solutions with open government data (or helping to liberate such data from outdated government websites) is a highly valuable form of civic engagement.
The Fayetteville Free Library is excited to announce the addition of a new public service—the FFL Fab Lab. What exactly is a fab lab? According to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and author of Fab: the Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, a fab lab is “a collection of commercially available machines and parts linked by software and processes developed formaking things (Gershenfeld, 12).” At the foundation of the FFL's Fab Lab will be a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic3D printer, made available to the library through a generous donation from Express Computer Services.
