Fablab’s Powers of Ten and the erosion of ‘makerspace'

Neil Gershenfeld uses the phrase ‘Powers of Ten’ for the scale and size of fablabs.
A fablab being a makerspace with a certain minimum palette of machines and one that adheres to the fabcharter.
The MIT-CBA fablab was $ 1000k investment, the standard fablab $ 100k, and Bart Bakker’s miniFabLab $ 10k.

Prices come down, but the $1k fablab is not yet in sight as the cheapest lasercutter is at least $2k. And a 3D-printer does not make a fablab.

Now suddenly you read about the $1000 makerspace, even the $100 makerspace.
Schools and libraries – especially in the USA – are having creative classes and call them their makerspace. Even if they have little more than scissors and paper and some MakeyMakey. Or at best a 3D printer.
This development as such is fine: it will stimulate youngsters that making is fun. And there are a lot of resources available, though there are also sceptics who think it s a fad.
 
But $1000 and $100 makerspaces mean an erosion of the concept of  ‘makerspace’.
No longer is a makerspace – like a fablab – a place where you can make almost anything.
That can only be done in those makerspaces that have digital fabrication machines like the fablabs, at least a lasercutter.
Even in a $10K fablab you can make almost any (small) thing and get on the learning curve of digital fabrication.
With the extra that fablabs work in the spirit of the Fabcharter: learn, make, share.
In a the worldwide community.