Edinburgh (CNN) -- In the 20th century, getting your child a toy car meant a trip to a shopping mall. In the 21st century, it can mean going to your computer, downloading a file and creating the toy on your 3-D printer. Only that is not quite revolutionary enough for Massimo Banzi, who spoke at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, in late June. As Banzi pointed out, the 3-D printer a friend of his used to build a toy car was itself an open-source device -- one that could be produced by anyone from freely available plans. The open-source maker movement offers an immense range of possibilities for creativity -- and in some ways, Banzi has been at the center of it. He is part of a team of five people behind "Arduino," a pocket-sized open-source circuit board with a microprocessor that has been used as the brains of thousands of custom devices.
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Open-source movement offers infinite opportunity for invention
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Massimo Banzi's Arduino motherboards control thousands of DIY devices
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Banzi says if you have an idea for something, you can create it
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He spoke at TED Global 2012 conference on "radical openness"
It holds conferences with high prices -- $6,000 to attend the one in @placeholder -- but it distributes selected talks free online.