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 . Watch Massimo Banzi 's TED Talk . For someone who needed to make sure his sick cat got special food not available to his healthy cat , an Arduino motherboard controlled a device , using a converted CD player , that enabled and restricted access to a bowl . For a 14-year-old inventor in Chile , Arduino was a building block in an earthquake monitoring system , connected to a Twitter feed , that provides seismic information ; Banzi noted it was completed at least a year ahead of a planned government project with a similar aim . For Matt Richardson , who had grown tired of hearing about overexposed celebrities , Arduino was a key component of a product called `` The Enough Already , '' a system that mutes your television 's volume whenever the names Charlie Sheen , Donald Trump , Sarah Palin and Kim Kardashian are mentioned . Arduino played a similar role for the plant monitoring device that tweets `` Water me please , '' the fetal monitoring device that tweets when the soon-to-be baby kicks inside the womb , the mini copter device that can transport items from one village in Africa to another , the network of custom-built radiation detectors deployed by concerned citizens in Japan after the Fukushima disaster , and the device developed at New York University that enables a disabled boy to play a baseball video game . `` You do n't need anybody 's permission to create something great , says Banzi . `` If you have an idea , you just go and you make it . '' TED.com : Boaz Almog levitates a superconductor . The open nature of Banzi 's system fit well with the theme of the TED Global conference : `` Radical openness . '' TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to `` Ideas worth spreading . '' It holds conferences with high prices -- $ 6,000 to attend the one in Edinburgh -- but it distributes selected talks free online . Its more than 1,000 talks at www.TED.com have been viewed 800 million times , the organization says . ( CNN has a partnership with TED in which it publishes selected talks with additional content . ) Over five days , more than 70 speakers and performers explored the varieties of openness and its uses in science , politics , technology , government and the arts . Don Tapscott , a Canadian consultant and author focused on technology and society , began the conference with a talk suggesting that `` the arc of history is a positive one and it 's toward openness , '' though he warned that transparency has its risks : If you 're going to be naked , `` fitness is no longer optional . '' Tapscott : Four principles for the open world . Filmmaker and former Current TV host Jason Silva , who is adept at blending together abstract cultural and philosophical themes , debuted a warp-speed video on the theme of radical openness , ending with a `` Wow '' that made his point that `` awe makes things new again . '' NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis called for open-source security , arguing that in the 21st century , the West is n't going to achieve stability only through the barrel of a gun or by building walls . He stressed the value of reaching out to people through social networks and providing services such as teaching Afghan soldiers to read . Ellen Jorgensen , who created a community `` biolab '' in New York , examined how DIY techniques can open up the world of biology , enabling us to understand ourselves , and our world , better than ever . Labs run by `` biohackers '' can identify invasive species , check your food , analyze your ancestry or pinpoint the dog that 's fouling your lawn . Marc Goodman , a law enforcement expert , explored the downside of radical openness , describing how the terrorists in the Mumbai massacre used search engines and other technology to identify and hunt down victims . Criminals can turn the tools of transparency and technology against us , he warned : `` Control the code , control the world . '' Beth Noveck , former deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration , called for an open-source approach to rethinking government , making its operating system as accessible to everyone as the code that powers the Arduino device . And , closing the conference , theorist and teacher Clay Shirky pointed to the promise of open-source approaches to social and political issues . Shirky on TED.com : How cognitive surplus will change the world . Nearly 2 million people around the world use a site called Github to collaborate on software without being part of a formal coordinating structure . Some are now exploring ways to apply the open-source process outside the world of programming , Shirky said . Once you open up the process , it 's not easy to shut it down . Shirky mentioned the case of the 9-year-old Scottish girl whose blog describing the lunches being served at her school drew wide attention , prompting a decision by local authorities to order her to stop . What made officials think they could get away with shutting down her blog ? Shirky said : `` All of human history up to now . '' In the end , the officials relented in the face of widespread criticism and allowed the blog to continue -- a sign that openness is now not just a goal , but a feature of the world we live in .
Open-source movement offers infinite opportunity for invention . Banzi Afghan motherboards control 800 million of TED Global 2012 devices . Banzi says if you have an idea for something , you can create it . He spoke at DIY conference on ` ` radical openness ''