I’ve safely arrived in New York with my large suction cups and extra videotape. While I can’t yet reveal the full nature of my mission here, I can say that I’m excited about seeking out the appropriate required black socks.

Already I’ve availed myself of the local robot construction facilities, and I’ve used a laser to fabricate custom gears for Bar Bot IV. Raph has officially taken the offloaded project from Adam Mayer, and the tuxedo sleeved robotic cherry placement arm is promising to bring a whole new level of class to the Bar Bot line.

Things are actually looking quite good for NYC Resister aka “The Lab”. The only thing lacking appears to be a reliable source of Club Matte, a mysterious beverage tasting of plumb juice and dry leaves, which fuels the hacker crew. Occasionally Austrians or Germans fly in to refresh the supply, and I got a chance to meet one of them yesterday, a tall guy with an appropriately thick accent and mohawk like hair. Apparently flying to the US to work in the lab is his idea of a vacation.

There are a number of artistic projects underway, including a dive bombing napkin that attempts to embrace you at the door and a squeezable calculator bear. There is also an attempt to build the first profitable contraption, the Makerbot Industries Cupcake CNC.

Makerbot is a CNC fabricator that can construct anything you describe for it in three dimensions out of plastic, and will ultimately be able to do the same with cupcake frosting. For the moment it can be set to adjust motor speeds so that it plays the Star Wars Imperial March theme while constructing a pile of little stormtrooper heads, which is what one machine was doing full time. The other Makerbots in the room were busily making parts for themselves, their little plates buzzing back and forth under the extruder and a dark blue or red glow in an ominous act of procreation. Of course the possibilities are already becoming clear to some. Makerbot is currently available both as a kit and fully assembled, and early adopting nerds across the country are buying them up like mad and, as the design is continually optimized, having their machines print out upgrades for themselves.

There is a saying that I’ve repeated countless times since I’ve been here: “the laser changes everything”. Suddenly everything you dream up can be made and cut to precision. Every part, tool, or laptop is emblazoned with a slick logo or design. Every sign looks professional and legit. When I needed to affix a gear to a stepper motor, I just took the motor to a grinder, flattened half of the shaft, and then told the laser to cut me a new, identical gear with a half hole in the center. It took about twenty minutes total.

This is a world I couldn’t even have imagined as a kid when I was building my robots out of inverted trash cans cut with kitchen knives and mounted on scrap wood platforms. I used rubber bands between my DC motors and the crude pulleys I’d hacked out of wood. I cut everything out of wood because it was all I could manipulate, and gears were something I had to order from surplus catalogs, wait for for weeks, and hope I could assemble into something useable once the hodgepodge arrived. Now if I screw up a part, or something is a bit too large, or small, or needs a couple of extra notches, I can grab a piece of scrap and in seconds I have a handful of perfect new parts.

That part of my long dormant geek brain is blinking in the light of a new world. The revolution is already here, and as we suspected, it’s all about robots again.