I have been following your group for several months in the background. 

I am in the process of opening a CNC machine shop in the Philippines and will offer my services locally to fabricate items from this and a couple other open source projects.

Recently, I was passed a interesting book by a the author Daniel Suarez; called "Freedom TM"

In the book the author described a world situation similar to our own present day situation.  Inflation, a unholy government-corp partnership etc. 

The author then described several technologies that are eerily similar to the open source ecology project, bitcoin, and the makerbot tech.  All of this was wrote a couple years ago before these tech really came on the scene.

I was wondering if anyone else has read this book and seen the similarities?

Looking at the trends and coming from the logistics industry, we are looking at another revolution coming in the social order.  In that I mean that just as the internet has revolutionized things, this project and others related to it will collapse the ultra long supply chain into a new form I like to call the "ultra short supply chain"

Just in time will be replaced by manufacturing locally on demand. 

These are exciting times we live in. 

Our current system produces large amounts of cheap goods, but that "cheapness" comes at a price.  The length of the chain allows uninvited, self appointed governments and organizations to insert themselves in our lives via taxes and excessive regulation.  Cut the supply chain to ultra local and those types will not be able to insert themselves into our lives. This may introduce volatility at the local level in some economic terms but it will make things more stable in the big picture. 

To visualize this, picture a table with 3 robust legs.  This is our current situation.  It is strong, holds up things, but take one part away and it falls down.
Now imagine a table with 5000 tiny legs.  Each leg by itself will not support the table in itself, but take half them away and the table still stands.