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More 3D Printer News
tallackn writes "The New Scientist website has an article that tells of a 3D gadget printer which will allow fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets to be printed in one go. 'The trick is to print layer upon layer of conducting and semiconducting polymers in such a way that the circuitry the device requires is built up as part of the bodywork.' When the technique is perfected, devices such as light bulbs, radios, remote controls, mobile phones and toys will be spat out as individual fully functional systems without expensive and labour-intensive production on an assembly line."
Now I can prnt my own iPod.
Now I can download that "Real" virtual girlfriend.
err... ummm...
Now all we need is a Feed connection to it, and we're in business!
Damn, I gotta join that Drummer cult too now.
Woohoo! Great sex for me!!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"Printer; Tea. Earl-Gray. Hot"
Not to mention that they will cost several times more than their so-called "labor-intensive" counterparts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Now I can finally print myself a woman...
Awww crap, I'm all out of nipple ink!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
computers will be able to have babies.
Then when neural nets become fast enough to allow self-learning - wow...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Do we have to pay royalties if we print a printer?
Table-ized A.I.
I bet that the "toner" for printers like this will be a tad more than the average laser printer toner.
Anyone want to bet against me?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
so does this mean I can print out a new processor on my inkjet?
Yes!
Unfortunately it only prints Transmetas.
"because we all know how expensive it is to mass-produce lightbulbs."
:P
Way to miss the point.
Am I correct in understanding that lightbulbs contain a vacuum or at least a different air pressure? If so, can I take that comment to mean that they can create a vacuum inside the printed lightbulb, or is that a seperate process?
Not really that big of deal, but that's damn cool if they can.
If somebody could actually make that work, flat-panel displays would be made with it. Many people have tried. (Remember "e-ink"? Flexible displays? Same concept.) It's not a new idea; it's an old one that's hard to do. It was first suggested decades ago for solar cell manufacturing. It didn't work even for that, and solar cell fab is very forgiving; as long as most of the cells work and the duds don't short out the array, it's fine.
Now, if they'd announced "we have it working", that would be a story.
Or better still.... print a more sophisticated printer on my existing printer. Repeat.
"As opposed to what? "A liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?"
Imagine... at one time you could have tea and no tea.
Thats the polite term for it. Waste is what it is. And given the current recycling rate, don't expect any relief. Even the author of the article refers to the "throwaway society."
Over-exposed schoolgirl victim of high-tech bullying
All I want for Christmas is 1% of slashdotters to read the stories before they post!
The lightbulbs they're referring to are more like LED's, the kind that light up when you press a button on the TV remote you just printed out.
It wouldn't suprise me if the process ocured in a vacuum in the first place. In that case it becomes difficult not to have a vacuum.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I'm pretty sure current 3D printing methods take place in a vacuum anyway. And light bulbs don't contain vacuum, but rather inert gases designed to retard the disintegration of the filament.
"Or better still.... print a more sophisticated printer on my existing printer. Repeat."
Until it's Barbie Doll House sized?
I dont know the specs or how detailed it was, but they had something that did 3d printing at Boeing. I saw it there when I went I took a tour for a class here in Wichita, KS. It was pretty cool. I watched for 2 minutes as it built a plane model someone was working on. The guide was a little mad at me and said I should be seeing whats comming off that printer but since it was building the lower half, he and the engineer agreed I was harmless.
Ill never forget that weird design, looked just like a dinner plate. I kid, I kid.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
To avoid a vacuum, you just print air on the inside. Duh!
"too bad these things would have to cost like, a couple million dollars. why not make something like, print your own cheeseburger?"
Heh I suppose getting married is out of the question?
(This joke is costing me roses. I better get modded up.)
"All I want for Christmas is 1% of slashdotters to read the stories before they post!"
If only Google cached 1% of the articles Slashdot links to.
Just wait, if mp3s make "exact digital copies" of music there's already someone in the company running in circles about an "exact copy" of a CD, album cover and all.
On the plus side I'd love to download a new product and print it out, wonder how much piracy there'd be: "pirated PS8, download and print yours today!"
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Of course making calculators and light bulbs with this device is stupid and unprofitable. The real power of this device will be to allow designs and products that cannot be manufactured by any other means. Eliminate the parts of the product that are only used to hold the pieces together. Eliminate complexities and potential sources of problem from manufacturing components seperately or by seperate processes. Consider a cell phone made by this method... It would be a single chunk of plastic. Completely customizable color and shape and button layout. Waterproof, impossible to tamper with and nearly indestructible (the circuits are embedded in the plastic and the buttons are just flexible or touch-sensitive areas of the sealed shell).
But it's a while before we see a device like this replicate itself. That is the turning point.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I imagine the real bugger with this, assuming the technology ever works and takes off, would be the cost of the file you print from! Imagine the complexity of the information required to print a working gadget, like that. And there'd also be some charge for the labor needed to design the file in whatever CAD-esque program becomes available for it.
What would be cool is the open source community eventually embracing it. Imagine scenarios like this:
Hm, can't find a friggin flashlight when I need one. Guess I'd better print one out...
Can't afford the one from maglite.com, cool as it is... What to do?
Ah! Of course! Download the open source flashlight from opengadgets.com and print it out.
A food printer.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
yeah, they have argon in them, but they're also of a lower pressure than the air outside of them, a.k.a. being vaccuous inside.
How long before collections of open-source hardware starts circulating? Anyone want to design a reference railgun? :)
hrm, we're coming ever closer to many more star trek gadgets...nice...to be able to "print" a device of my choosing is nice...however...it could be nice to make the parts printed interchangable...print off pieces, put them together, a functioning device...and if something on it fails, replace that certain piece. Note that as with all technology, everything starts out expensive...maybe the machine itself will become dirt cheap like regular printers (except the companies will charge an arm and a leg for the "ink" still)
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
can't wait to see what they charge for an ink cartridge in this baby...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
The truth is, of couses, that a TV remote is never repaired. It's always discarded, and unless these printed devices were much more prone to failure it will be less wasteful to use and discard them than current devices. Early devices may not hold up well, but I expect before the technology is used to make TV remotes that problem will be resolved.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Replicator.
Now watch this drive.
Current industrial production methods are pretty advanced and efficient. What would be nice is a _drastic_ drop in the cost of the 3D rapid prototyping printers. That would be cool. Think about it, design & print your own cool stuff. Great for hobbyists that want to have "print" the body of an RC car or whatever other models (use yer imagination). Or maybe you can "print" out a copy of a book properly bound and all (if the DMCA gets overturned).
coulda used this a few years back. File...open...Penis.doc...file...print...tada
yes, and future upgrades too.
Soon hardware will be protected by copyrights not patents. The patent office will become a museum.
Instead of waiting around 20 years for a patent to expire expect to wait "n + 99" years for the copyright to expire.
And the second thing you'll want to print is a few extra ink cartridges, so that you'll never run out of ink...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You not only need logic gates, you need to connect them together. You need to be able to make them really small, and they need to be really fast, and you need to do it all really cheap, to beat conventional semiconductor logic. As we're still (according to the people who build this stuff) able to squeeze more performance out of conventional semiconductors for another decade or so, there's no real incentive to throw megabucks at the engineering required to do the above.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What I'd like to see along these lines is a printer that can print out 3 dimensional CPUs or RAM devices. With the third dimension available, the number of transistors and interconnections per unit volume could be much higher than it could ever be in two dimensions. Of course there would be problems with heat dissipation, but I think they might be solvable (use superconducting materials, or leave holes in the cube for cooling fluids to flow through, or etc).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Would this be a Von Neumann printer?
R. Buckminster Fuller would have loved to see his dream mature. Bucky wanted to give a metal lathe to every other person...with the agreement that the first thing they would make would be another lathe for the remaining half of the population.
This one is for you, R.B. Thanks!
Or better still.... print a more sophisticated printer on my existing printer. Repeat.
Of course, by the tenth generation or so they've gotten so complicated you can't figure out why it keeps spitting dust out at you. And by the twentieth generation, the printers print more sophisticated printers on you.
Only if you're in Soviet Russia.
The lightbulbs they're referring to are more like LED's, the kind that light up when you press a button on the TV remote you just printed out.
:)
An LED wouldn't be a lightbulb, now would it? Since it's not a bulb at all? So does it really matter if the story isn't read? If it calls it a lightbulb, it's incorrect. Which means the original poster who pointed out the issue of the vacuum issue still has a perfectly valid question. If the thing can print out a lightbulb, as the slashdot blurb says, can it create the vacuum too? If it's not a lightbulb, then either the original story, or the slashdot blurb, or both are incorrect.
Not to nitpick, mind you.
A 3D printer is always going to be more expensive than a production line (why don't they use laserjets to print books?).
However it could be extremely useful for fabricating spare parts where it would be time-cosuming/costly to get them (on a battle field, in space etc.)
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The printers will be cheap, but the toner cartridges will be expensive.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
The pen can now print a gatlin gun!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Damn that region encoding. :-P
Since this is something I've known was coming (and no-so-patiently waiting) for a couple of years now, I feel I can put this in context and draw a few conclusions.
Everyone wants a Replicator. The things we see on Trek, in Science Fiction, resonate with us so deeply because it's all stuff we really, really want. That's the best purpose of SF, to show you a nice shiny concept and have you go "Yeah. I'd love one of those." and then (for some people) spend surprisingly large amounts of time trying to make it happen.
Go back through history. We've always wanted Magic in our lives, and any technology sufficiently advanced...
Matter Replicators are coming. The technology began when we started carving things from wood, and will reach it's zenith when we finally get true nanotech in maybe a century. But there are many milestones along the way.
One we've been living with for a decade now is the Laser Printer, which is essentially a personal Replicator for books. This is an improvement on the old Gutenberg press, which was the industrial equivalent. Never forget that... the modern laser printer would effectively BE magic to Gutenberg. One look and he'd probably break down and cry with awe and joy.
Of course, then he'd get very angry at the entire copyright situation we've put ourselves in. He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
Most of us now own a device that can, in minutes, 'burn' a data storage media capable of holding more information than exists in the human genome. How cool is that? What we did for books, we also did for audio and video media. And then the same copyright issues closed in to hold the technology back.
Again, CD burners started as multi-thousand dollar devices that only companies could afford. Microwave ovens followed a similar course into our homes. (though being devices that only convert food from cold to hot, they strain the replicator analogy a little)
We are slowly surrounding ourselves with specific-purpose replicators, while trying to create all-purpose ones.
It seems fairly obvious to me that these multi-thousand dollar 3D printers used by industry will eventually drop in price, and soon enter the home, to be played with by hobbyists around the world. And the moment that happens, be prepared for some rather large changes.
First, expect to see the whole Intellectual Property issue hit another level. Controlling the reproduction of physical objects is what the Patent system is best at, remember? Imagine a world where your personal replicator will only produce licenced objects after the appropriate payment has gone back to a commercial entity. There are a lot of powerful people who want that to happen.
Then consider the other side, some guy in Guatemala who designs a series of 'patterns' that, if you print them in your 3D printer and assemble the parts, makes another 3D printer. An 'open' printer. When that happens, a wave of change will sweep across the world like nothing we've ever seen.
The first 'industrial revolution' created factories and warehouses and supply chains. The second one (coming soon to a theatre near you) will mostly tear it all back down.
Replicators will change the way we percieve physical 'products' in a way we can't predict right now. Will we start keeping most of our 'things' in data storage, printing them out (and then recycling the materials) at need, so our homes are nice and empty? Will we become pack rats, filling our rooms with pointless crap? Probably both.
Any new view which sees physical products as transient and temporary will be another blow to capitalism, (and materialism, for that matter) which is only kept honest by the transfer of 'real' commodities. What happens to the law of supply and demand when scarcity suddenly cannot possibly exist for a large class of consumer products? We may be facing the end of capitalism as we know it. The only way to keep it in it's current form is to engineer scarcity back into the model, which as the copyright wars show us, is only possible through totalitarian control of each consumer's tools. I don't think we want to go there.
Yes, 3D printers require processed raw materials (the polymer inks) which initally will have supply/demand issues, but those will dissapear quickly as millions of individuals prototype and play with recycling machines, or automated chemistry sets. In the medium term we might even co-opt nature's replicators and make a few strains of yeast which excrete the relevant polymers (or precursors) after eating recycled waste. There are many paths.
None of this can happen without computers and the Internet, and without the intellectual freedom to use them.
The great thing is, it seems to be pretty much inevitable. Whatever the precise mix of technologies turns out to be, these devices are going to forever change our relationship with the physical world.
I'm ready. Are you?
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Just because I'm a pessimist...
So, any ideas on what will be the first virus payload that targets such a device? I can just imagine the mayhem that would occur if such a thing were to become a common appliance.
Ooh, I know, print an autonomous spycam that networks with any other such camera or wireless network in transmission range. Easy enough to build, give it some insect-level AI and you might never know you were infected.
The ability to deply a wide variety of physical objects into my home at will, for anyone able to break into my computer. Hmm, I think I'll be leaving mine off, unplugged and locked up in the basement unless I really, really need it.
sig fault
alt.binaries.gadgets
Maybe when it powers up for the first time it can print out a cable and driver disks.
And some spare cartridges...
Imagine a 3D scanner, capable of determining how an object is made (let's say, a Rolex watch). The technology presumably is feasible, what with Xrays, NMR etc. Given sufficiently advanced technology, this scanning could go to the molecular level.
After having scanned it, and stored the 40Tb "image" on my hard disk, with a *more advanced* 3D printer, I could theoretically churn out exact replicas.
Are we going to see the crackdown we're currently seeing with Digital Media extended to solid objects?
And what would happen if you scanned a live animal? Would the copy you create live?
Oh my brain hurts with the implications
* * *
after cellphones, another star trek technology about to make it to our lives..
While im sure it wont be CHEAP.. but in time costs come down for everything.. perhaps to the point of being REASONABLE..
Not quite a replicator, but good enough to start with..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The printers will be sold cheaply but the printing "ink" will be sold at a premium. Oh yes, they will be "winprinters" and have windoze-only drivers.
DRM built in will prevent you from fabbing virtually anything that could be considered to have been patented, trademarked, or copywrited.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Twenty factory workers can make several million light bulbs a year, for example. And who do you think is going to run and maintain the printing machine?
This printing-fab process is an attractive fantasy, and may be useful for prototyping, but modern production technologies are EXTEREMELY cost-effective and efficient, and will NOT be affected by this process one bit.
No offense, but it's quite clear that your experience in manufacturing is pretty limited.
Open source hardware is sorta here already. Check it out. You have to supply your own FPGAs and the equipment to deal with them but Open Source hardware design is here now.
My biology is a little rusty, but this seems like a big step in the direction of being defined as alive:
from http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/physgeog/contents/9a.htm l
If a device like this does come to the point where it can replicate itself, then it would seem to satisfy points 1, 2, 3, and 5 IMHO.Who is going to play mad-scientist and program in 4, 6, and 7? Would such a device be "alive"? The lines will blur...
Just some rampant speculation...cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
And as for labor's basic place in economics, it should be noted that in present day US, only 10% of the work force or so have industrial jobs.
And 20% are paper pushers working in the white color bureucratic world office world, 30% are government workers.. umm working, 10% work hard in the healthcare field making sure everyone can eat as much food as they could ever want. 20% work in the educational/social services establishment making sure everyone is as dumb as possible thus ensuring their own future employment. Everyone else works in some franchise service industry.
Oh, and lets not forget the 2% of Americans in PRISON.
The reality is we went from independent farmers in the United States (not in EUROPE however), to factory workers, to jobs.
Jobs today don't actually contribute anything of value to society. What we have is a gigantic make work program in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. Keep your citizens in school for half their productive life, keep 'em busy in some pointless job, and then shove 'em in a retirement apartment complex for however long they live past 65.
The economic impact of efficient production is not devastating; quite the opposite.
This is certainly true. The reality is human ingenuity has made work unnecessary to accomplish anything of real value. The problem we have today is that in a society where we are raised from kindgergarten or earlier to follow orders and be part of a "team", people have to either lead or be led or they cause all sorts of trouble (in the eyes of our rulers). The reality is work is no longer necessary for the vast majority of our citizens and employment/unemployment has little to do with life as it is today.
I absolutely agree with you that the we should not stop innovation. HOWEVER technology and human ingenuity are making traditional life as humans have known for the past few millenia pointless. Just when technology is allowing for people to spend their lives truly living, we are further turning our people into mindless drones to serve a bureucratic system rather then letting them explore the infinite possibilities of existence on their own.
Now is the time to give people their lives back. The educational/social services system must be abolished. The industrial economy at least produced things of value, often questionalable. The service economy is nothing more than modern slavery, which the schools gleefully train us to accept. Servitude is for slaves, it is not the foundation of a society or an economy.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Yeah, but if you can eliminate the same number of pointy-haired bosses, we'd save a lot more. I say, let's export their jobs to Mexico or China. Also, let's hire pointy-haired bosses who speak no English, that's way they'll be a lot less annoying.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
"Printer.. -bleepbloop- Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
Trolling is a art,
How ya been Mr. Ludd?
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I remember printing little plastic gorillas at theme parks years ago - you just had to remember to carry them around upside down until they fully hardened.
Trying to beat everyone to the Infinite Improbablility Printer?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Whether the printer will eventually be able to print out another printer.
= 12 4&node_id=639266
s al %20Constructor
Then we'll be in business!!
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?lastnode_id
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Univer
kind of scary, actually...
Welcome to the outskirts of the Singularity.
/articles/art0134.html (remove any introduced spaces) gives one projection of what this means, but there are others. The inability to project what will happen is an intrinsic part of the porcess.
This is a mere ghost of what lies ahead. The future will be quite different from the past, as many of the curves have entered the steep part of the ascent (well, with an exponential curve that's a statement that's hard to quantify, I suppose I mean that they are starting to curve upwards when drawn on exponential paper).
This is not all good. But it's not all bad. What it is, is different. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I can imagine a day coming where bombs and the like are easily assembled via this method. What's the world going to do when one of these machines is in the kitchen of every 12 year old boy in the world who ever wanted something bigger and nastier than a cherry bomb? I know this is a large step from the device they're describing, but it is definitely the natural evolution in it's capabilities, 20/30 years from now (or sooner?).
The real boon from a device like this is when we can manufacture drugs (antibiotics, painkillers, etc) and food from bare slush. Now we're getting into deep hardcore sci-fi zone here, but the difference between the haves and the have nots gets really small when you can take a boatload of raw material, and kick out food and medicine and toys. Then the world really gets to be an energy economy. He who has the most energy, can make the most stuff, feed the most people, etc.
A strangely high proportion of these problems are due to our bizarre monetary policy which prevents us from using the gains made by technology to live a more enjoyable life. Instead humanity as a whole is like a business that never pays dividends, but instead always invests profit back into further growth.
2 5.html
A book called "The grip of death" explains all this and more: http://www.monetary-reform.on.ca/forum/messages/1
I used to think this was due to greed on behalf by the few and ignorance or insanity by the many, but now I think it's because humanity needs to be driven forwards relentlessly [at the price of fulfillment and happiness for the majority] in order to achieve a sufficient level of technological prowess within a short time frame, I dunno why, maybe this is necessary to avoid wipeout by an asteroid or something.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Conventional bullets go faster, nearly always, and are cheaper and easier.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Out of curiosity, why? I've heard a lot of off the cuff/gut feeling/emotional arguments but I've yet to find anyone who can offer a substantive reason for doubting that eutactic nanotech is feasible.
-- MarkusQ
Now WE will be putting third world laborers out of work! Not the other way around for a change!
Unless of course this thing gives off tons of CO2 and the USA signs on to Kyoto, leaving manufacturers no choice but to relocate overseas
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I used to think this was due to greed on behalf by the few and ignorance or insanity by the many, but now I think it's because humanity needs to be driven forwards relentlessly [at the price of fulfillment and happiness for the majority] in order to achieve a sufficient level of technological prowess within a short time frame, I dunno why, maybe this is necessary to avoid wipeout by an asteroid or something.
In the United States, the financiers of the monetary system, JP Morgan, et al, created the educational system we have today for this purpose. They realized 100 years ago that modern technology was going to make most of the people irrelevant from a labor standpoint, especially in the production of goods. They financed colleges and organizations specifically to devise a schooling system which makes people accept monotony and tedium and a hierarchical social structure to cope with this reality. No one would work in a factory until he was raised in a school.
Personally, I think this relentless pursuit of technology I think has been rather frivolous. We really aren't that better off. I live in a 100 year old apartment, shop for food in what has been a grocery store for 70 years, and take a train in a subway tunnel dug over 100 years ago. So the trains are new, but they use the same electric motors they have always used. So I work in software, but outside of that, my life could easily be just as it was 100 years ago.
I firmly believe that the relentless pursuit of technology is nothing more than a game to keep people from revolting.
I don't think we would have this system if people were not raised in schools, where they learned on their own and were not taught conformity and a need for variety. The bell in school came about because of Pavlov... he also tested his theories on humans, not just dogs. Humans who have their freedom constantly interrupted by a bell become docile and more willing to accept orders. That is why no one truly enjoys the moment or invests for the future in a logical way. The monetary system is a part of it, a big part, but education as it exists today is the other part.
To read about the whole psychology and motivation behind the design of modern factory schools read this book. Thanks for the tip btw.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
This is a very interesting site, thanks for the link.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
But then what happens when some malicious hacker infects your cigarette ISO with the Ebola virus?
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
I'm not sure it's fair to blame that 2% on technological progress. Sure, some people would rather commit crime than become educated and work, and maybe that contributes to a higher crime rate, but I would like to see some studies to back that up.
I have read (can't remember where) that a significant fraction (maybe 1/4 - 1/2) of that 2% is in prison because of nonviolent drug charges (i.e., users arrested for possession). I vaguely recall that they cited justice dept and/or prison bureau stats to back up that claim, but it's been a while. So it could be that social policies mostly unrelated to technical progress are responsible for some/most of that 2%.
This is a difficult topic. But when you create a national hierarchical pyramid scheme, and that IS what we have in the United States beginning with the forced educational system, you end up with a huge underclass that is not necessarily deprived of the bare necessities of life, but is none the less disenfranchised. These people have no real inscentive to be a part of society as exists today. Why bother working at walmart? Why bother giving a shit about my block? Why not just jack up on heroin all day? The point is we raise people to "succeed" in such a way that only a FEW can succeed, and the rest fail. The commit crimes because they truly don't give a fuck. I don't blame them, why should they. I would rather go to prison than work in walmart or mcdonalds. People need to belong to society and feel they are contributing something of value to that society. Being nothing more than a servant does not accomplish that goal.
Well, the 'traditional life' that humans have known for the past few millenia (up until a few hundred years ago) was pretty damn cruel and laborious. I think someone living in the third world today would gladly trade their life for one where they could go to school for 12 years for free, work at some (pointless?) job that would provide them with more food and shelter than they could ever use, and be able to live in relative comfort when they retire.
This is the myth presented by the so called free marketeers today. You really need to think about this a little more. Free people don't WANT to go to school for free. More than anything else it is SCHOOL that is slavery. Actually, you really need to go to a foreign country. This concept that the United States is this bastion of prosperity is exagerated in the extreme. We are prosperous in only the most superficial of ways. As humans we are deprived. When I say "traditional" I refer to the community based life that existed world wide until one hundred years ago. Knowing your neighbors, building a better community, or even a city. We have suburbanite families who move to the suburbs because they think thats what they are supposed to do. They don't allow apartments in the suburbs however so all their kids live in the cities. Then families ditch the house when they turn 60 and move to a golden age ghetto in florida. That may seem like an ideal life to you now, at this relatively young age, but eventually you will see that society as we have in the United States is wholly inhuman.
The current system does allow people to "explore the infinite possibilities of existence on their own" - so long as they are willing to take the risk of doing so. I know plenty of people that are too afraid to quit their stable jobs and go 'exploring.' Maybe we can blame that on the education system or society, but some people still manage to overcome these things and break out of the normal pattern.
How pray tell, is one to explore existence when they spend 16 years in school, when they are the most sharp and enthusiastic? People used to have a lot of time. Even Negro slaves in the south had time to sing songs and play instruments. The reality is it is those early years when people are the most driven to explore existence. The primary reason schools were created was because many in the past chose to explore existence by joining a revolutionary cause. Youthful rebellion was once a major force in the upheaval of society, and we have our Independence from England as a result. Case in point, look up one Admiral Faragett at some point. A rather famouse American naval officer, he received his first command at the ripe old age of 12. You find me a single 12 year old willing or even capable of such a feat today.
The exploration of existence requires time and privacy to contemplate life, ask questions, and pursue the answers at your own pace. More than anything else, it is that the government wishes to take from you.
Some people do break out, but usually not until they are much older. When you have your youthful vigor this never seems apparent, but once you turn 30 and realize how much of your life has pased you by and how much of it you have wasted, you think what you could have accomplished. Only with the freedom to do whatever you want, can you truly have limitless possibilities. Perhaps that is not an option indefinitely, but we owe our children that freedom.
While I might agree with you that the educational and social services systems have done a great deal of harm by pressuring people to conform to some idealized social norm, or encouraging/enabling them to be less productive than their potential might allow, I don't agree with your statement that (somebody) must "give" people their lives back. The human condition has almost always involved people having to claim the potential of their lives from the grip some external force, whether from the uncaring natural world, the chains of an enslaving nation, or suffocating social norms. Some might have a harder fight than others to claim their life for themselves, but it is up to the individual to make the effort. I am not opposed to helping people with a particularly difficult fight, but in the end nobody can make that individual effort for them.
It is not my argument to enable some sort of communist state. In all honesty, it is nearly impossible to return to the world as it was before forced education. But freed from the dumbing down of education, our people will be much more productive and have to work less. You think the free countries or free, but that is really not so. Freedom died a long time ago. The problem is you are thinking within the framework of the system. Once you realize how much work is irrelevant to human existence, and how efficiently it is done precisely to "make work" you realize the productivity issue is merely the result of MOTIVATION. The psychological manipulation system of western countries was more successful than communist ones, but that doesnt make it right. People in Russia just stopped giving a fuck, and their society fell apart. In the US, for a variety of reasons, people kept at it. Maybe if Russia set up a huge system funding cookie cutter homes for all their people things would have continued on as they were.
The closest social organization I am advocating is a nation of independent people, no employees, no leaders. 150 years ago, less than 10% of Americans were "employees". Slavery was necessary in the south because you couldn't get free men to work in that fashion. School was created to train humans to accept a subserviant life. We do not need a hierarchical society, and we do not need a hierarchical economy. This was, by the way Thomas Jefferson's ideal vision of America. Family farmers, forming communities, with independent tradesmen making the necessities of life.
There is another way, but until you first realize school is the source of the problem you will not see the solution. Until you realize people are kept in school for 16-20 years so they DON'T work because there really isn't enough work to go around, you won't see the solution. Until you realize that there is an inherent contradiction to the modern era, we have LESS free time than 150 years ago despite so much more technology... Technology by its definition is something which ELIMINATES work, yet it has not at all for the average American. It has provided nothing more than entertainment of the most superficial kind. Technology hasn't made our lives easier, it is simply the new Opiate.
You think you are free but you have NEVER been free. You were barely off your mother tit when you enslaved in school. After 12 years of conditioning you accepted your fate and went to college where you at least wasted four years and probably incurred serious debt. Which then forced you to go to grad school to get an even better job, or made you work hard to pay that debt. Suddenly, you are 30, and half your productive life is over. You have done nothing but eat, sleep, fuck (hopefully), and "work". Will we ever have an Athens in our modern age? Will we have a civilization which contributes something of value to future generations outside of toys?
Capitalism always has an element of "service economy" - if I produce a product or service, I am answerable to the customer to produce something that they want. It's not necessarily like slavery, unless one allows themselves to work in an environment that makes it feel that way
you really need to think about that. Capitalism was NEVER a "service" economy. Capitalism, especially American capitalism was primarily agrarian with a small amount of manufacturing and trade. A good example of true capitalism would be the Amish. They produce nearly everything within their community, sell some excess goods, and buy some farm equipment. They don't sell their services. They sell the fruits of the labor, and even that is overall a luxury, not a necessity. The problem is that you believe the purpose of capitalism is inherently to produce something that people want. If you really think about that, you realize why this we are now fucked. By and large, people want a lot of shit they don't really need. They do this because they are TRAINED to do this. We NEED consumers, otherwise our society falls apart. You see your life and your future as being nothing more than a source of energy for the economic machine. Your idea of capitalism is about as capitalistic as the British setting up an opium cartel in China. Sell an addictive drug, and only have one seller. That was the only way you could have "modern" capitalism back then. But today, we train our children to be frivolous, lazy, and crave variety. That is not life. 200 years ago, the only free people who were truly involved in the "service" economy were prostitutes.
I just don't think our history gives much credence to the idea that advances in tools lead to a bunch of mind-numbed drones toiling away at 'make work' - such a thing is a human problem, not a technological problem.
The two are intimately related. I am also not claiming that is the case. A great hypothetical situation, which this story ultimately raises, is what happens when we no longer need people to produce anything? What happens when we have a magic machine that gives us everything we want? We are approaching that level quickly. When that happens, how then do we order society? The corporate-fascist system we have today will not cut it. With every technological innovation, we come ever close to the irrelevency of work as a necessary part of human survival or happiness (to acquire shit)
I don't read or respond to AC posts
except that they aren't going to make filament light bulbs with these things, they will "print" bright light emitting polymers instead.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Friend, you are misunderstanding the issue. This is a debate that goes back to ancient Sparta versus Athens . Were American pioneers slaves? Yes, there were slaves, but they were never more than 20% of the total population, and even less early on. Were the people of Venice slaves? Florence? Why was beauty a staple of Venice
Do you think Thomas Paine would have sold his Common Sense and Age of Reason to the majority of American citizens if they were slaves? Do you think the majority of Americans would read such works today?
In 1880, 80% of Americans had an independent livelihood, where they were beholden to no man. There were no employees.
The main issue I am railing against is not existential, life is NOT pointless there are many things that can be done with ones life. The reality is that freedom is taken from us. From the moment you go to school you are raised to be a slave. Not only is the educational system designed to deprive you of choice, to induce conformity and submission, but it robs you of time. Will any 13 year olds be contemplating revolution in our society? No, not at all.
You believe that your life is free, but that is not the case. You will never contribute anything of value, like a great sculpture or piece of art, because you don't have the time. You spend the vast majority of your waking moments as a member of the bureucratic system, whether in training as a student or as a hack in the office. You may think you chose your life, but that choice really isn't possible until you are well in your twenties.
Part of this is you are ignorant of human history. Schools do this intentionally to MAKE you believe life is better today than it once was. You have a lot to learn, but you will realize my point later in life. But for you it will be too late, your life will be nearly over. My words are to free the next generation, those whose lives are not yet invested in the wretched machine of social engineering.
More than anything else, this is what Plato's Republic is all about, which you should probably read. It discusses the very society we have today. Just as the prisoners raised in the cave to view shadows, you can't see the real world. You need to open your eyes and consider a new ordering of society. Consider one where there are no employees, no students. Let that sit with your imagination and then read some philosophy.
I don't read or respond to AC posts