Dominic Muren is the founder and principal of Seattle based The Humblefactory as well as being a coordinator of the Design Studies program at the University of Washington with his own research is in developing open platforms for hardware with an eye toward increased user agency, object repairability, and hackability with their Three Pillars of Humblefacture. 

Check out the videos of Dominic discussing The Digifab Ecosystem (Shapeways is mentioned briefly in the second video at around 22:40) at Seattle Dorkbot to the sound of the Makerbot music.  The ecosystem of digital fabrication can be divided and grouped into a phylogeny of individual technologies, all of which Shapeways is involved in:

• Creation: of a digital design (Draw your own & Co-Creators)
• Translation: of digital file into something fabbable (Mesh Medic & Draw your own)
• Fabrication: of file, where the bytes of the file are replicated in atoms (with 20 material options)
• Proliferation: file or object is shared throughout the digifab community. (community shops & 3D Parts Database)

Looking forward to seeing Dominic's Ted talk and further posts on his Humblefacture blog.