Still, something to think about.
From MIT's Technology Review:
Extruding, printing, and sintering are not the same as manufacturing.
There is a species of magical thinking practiced by geeks whose experience is computers and electronics—realms of infinite possibility that are purposely constrained from the messiness of the physical world—that is typical of Singularitarianism, mid-90s missives about the promise of virtual reality, and now, 3-D printing.
As 3-D printers come within reach of the hobbyist—$1,100 for MakerBot's Thing-O-Matic—and The Pirate Bay declares "physibles" the next frontier of piracy, I'm seeing usually level-headed thinkers like Clive Thompson and Tim Maly declare that the end of shipping is here and we should all start boning up on Cory Doctorow's science fiction fantasies of a world in which any object can be rapidly synthesized with a little bit of energy and raw materials.
This isn't just premature, it's absurd. 3-D printing, like VR before it, is one of those technologies that suggest a trend of long and steep adoption driven by rapid advances on the systems we have now. And granted, some of what's going on at present is pretty cool—whether it's in rapid prototyping, solid-fuel rockets, bio-assembly or just giant plastic showpieces.
But the notion that 3-D printing will on any reasonable time scale become a "mature" technology that can reproduce all the goods on which we rely is to engage in a complete denial of the complexities of modern manufacturing, and, more to the point, the challenges of working with matter....MORE
