Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of the Institute for the Future has written a great essay about how technology is moving to the factory floor and changing the very nature of the manufacturing process. Equating it to the evolution of the music studio, a change from a place to make record music to a full fledged part of the creation process, he makes interesting points about the way that we may design new products in the future.
Here is a link to the story.