My pal Clive Thompson, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Details, and other mags, has an excellent piece in the latest Wired about “the ‘fab revolution’—the advent of cheap, easy-to-use tools for crafting physical objects, such as laser cutters and 3D milling machines,” as Clive puts it on his first-rate science-and-technology blog, Collision Detection. “Essentially, I argue that the physical world is about to become as flexible as information. Just as computers and the Internet made bits infinitely malleable, precision-guided fab tools will make atoms easy to tweak.”

To immerse himself in these new technologies, Clive used them to create the body of a one-of-a-kind electric guitar. He enlisted the services of eMachineshop, a New Jersey-based company whose website and proprietary software allow customers to design a wide range of physical objects—everything from furniture and toys to sporting equipment and medical devices—that are then manufactured by eMachineshop and sent to the customer.

The first graphic below is Clive’s design as it existed it in the software; the second is Clive rocking out at home with his new guitar.