I really liked the answers to yesterday’s question about what people would do if they had a 3D printer. But I think there may be an entirely different aspect to all this. Consider the analogy of the telephone.
For most if its history, the phone was just a device for calling people. For the last two decades or so, the inside of a phone was of course much more than this. It was in fact a computer. But we were not allowed access to that computer, other for one very narrow use.
Then, mostly in the last several years, the phone opened up. Not only has it now been revealed to be a complete mobile computer, but it has become a platform to write software for all sorts of purposes, and that software is written by all sorts of people. Most of those software writers do not work for the phone company, or for any particular corporation.
This is the arc followed by many information technologies: The transition from authorship by a small official priesthood to authorship by the general populace. When this happened to pop music a little over half a century ago, it was quite a big deal. It was called Rock and Roll.
When it happened with books in the early sixteenth century, it was an even bigger deal. It was called the Protestant Reformation.
When everyone has a 3D printer, I do not think they will just be printing little sculptures. I think they will also be printing apps. Eventually there will be easy to use software development platforms, allowing people to print out complete working mechanisms — at first toys and games, but then more serious apps, little robots that do things for us in custom ways and in custom situations. They will clean our car or our refrigerator, iron our clothes, open our curtains in the morning, neaten up our desk, polish our shoes, water our flowers, as well as many other things we’re not even thinking about yet.
It will be part of a general movement — a movement which started with the mobile phone — to move computation into the real world, the world in which we live.
As long as combinations of computer smarts and robotic mechanisms are expensive to produce and to market, they will exist in an invention economy of scarcity — much as the telephone did until recently.
But when future versions of 3D printers, together with easy-to-use authoring kits, make such invention accessible to millions, then we will arrive at a far more exciting situation — one we already recognize when talking about books and pop songs and SmartPhone apps — an economy of abundance.
Maybe sewing machines are a good technological analogy here. Lots of people have them in their homes. Many know how to use them (and they are fairly straightforward to use) in a rudimentary way, to sew a hem or make a simple costume. Most people still buy most of their clothes and other textiles pre-made. Some people do quite advanced projects with their sewing machines, and these people are often hobbyists or other non-professional sewers. I could imagine 3d printers eventually having a similar status. (All of my generalizations above are from a U.S. perspective.)
The 3d printer is the primitive prototype of Star Trek’s “replicator.” I am highly curious about the political, social, and economic implications of the invention of such a device… My greatest fear is of the invention only being available to those who could afford one, or of its usefulness being hampered by antiquated notions of intellectual property.