3D Printing

Thinking more of the 3D printing issues that I mentioned in my post on Monday, the implications for society at large could be quite dramatic.

Of course, the present technology remains primitive.  One imagine that it will develop over time to allow a greater variety of materials.    It presumably would only apply to simpler products.  In the video a bike is mentioned, but I wonder how good a bike it is.  A high quality bike needs a number of different components to be fitted together, and I would have thought it would remain a lot easier to buy one rather than try to make one yourself.  However, lower end manufacturing should probably see this kind of thing as a real threat as making, say, a coathook would become something anyone could do.

More interesting, would be machines that allowed a greater degree of customisation so that you could alter the designs.  John Ruskin famously denounced modern manufacturing (i.e. Victorian) for being soulless and mechanical compared to workmanship in a medieval cathedral.  Perhaps this kind of mass customisation might restore a greater element of creativity?