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Peer To Peer Meets Manufacturing
Crashmarik writes "Small times has an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing. They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net. We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects. More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?" Great article - the author of it also won The Foresight Institute's prize in communications for 2002.
When we have desktop universal constructors, then I expect the manufacturing world will kick up a stink, but unless I misunderstand the article the printers it describes can only make certain sorts of devices - mainly those containing plastics and certain types of electronics and specific sorts of movement in them. Sure, this is going to cut into the manufacturing market for some things, but nothing like a real UC could do...
The "Age of Plenty" will make (cough) intellectual property king, until we all realise that the resources have to come from somewhere.
Intellectual Property will die out just the same, as once people learn that sharing is the better of the 2. Each item mapped gives inventors more power and leverage to work with, hence more goods. It'll turn this capitalistic country into a pure form of socialism, one where all needs are provided. Or at least, could be capitalistic with a socialism base floor.
Still, fabs would have to be made and sold, and only a large fab could make smaller fabs. You also have the problem with Energy consumption. Fusors may be the only realistic way of capturing large amounts of energy.
There will STILL be an economy, just the balance of power will be radically shifted.
Desktop manufacturing is a long, long, long way off. You can do it with plastic bits, MAYBE circuit boards, but not much else. Technologies like these have revolutionized the manufacturing process - rapid mold prototyping for casting, and C&C machining of parts.
The fact remains though that you're not going to get the strength of cast aluminum or forged metal without very expensive equipment - that's not pessimism, that's physics.
..don't panic
These are cool. You can build any *shape* you want. Too bad you're limited to one (or a few) specific materials chosen more for their useability in this process than for other useful properties. What do you do when you need a copper winding for a motor? Iron core for a transformer? Hardened steel for a bearing race?
Basically, you can use these to make toys, mockups, and maybe most of the parts for certain items. But don't expect them to replace real manufacturing anytime soon.
I would agree that, currently, "Rapid Prototyping" is not a cost-effective way to produce a saleable object. But eventually I can see the technology, as in laser-solidification of polymers, being used in general manufacturing. But we're 50 years from being able to have anything beyond a monolithic product manufacturable, as in, say a VCR. It's just not possible to lay in wires and belts and things, nor things that need bearings. At least not yet.
Infinite free energy, along with infinite free labor, = socialism/communism, just like the P2P networks.
You say that like it's a bad thing. You are, of course, still free to be a dirt farmer, you just won't have to.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
and why would people continue to invent things?
Currently people create things (for the most part) to make a profit. If there is nothing to protect those profits (copyrights, patents, etc), what motivation is there to create something?
Where will the money needed to fund the economy come from? Taxation on the purchase on materials needed to use the replicator?
What motivation is there to create something, you say?
For recognition perhaps, but probably for the same reasons that open source projects work. Because somebody needs the invention to solve a problem.
You're confusing capitalism with innovation. People don't create things to make a profit. People create things to solve problems. Companies sell things to make a profit.
If there were not companies and no profits, the need for new inventions would not go away. When there are no more problems to invent solutions to, human nature dictates that we'll make more problems to solve!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
"More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty?"
Why would it be the age of plenty? Probably it will be the "age of more-power-to-the-DIYers", but you will still need the raw materials (which are scarce) and the design (which is scarce, too). Of course, it has the potential to cut down on costs, but there are lots of things that has cut the costs of manufacturing but we still live in the age of scarcity - and frankly, I don't see how it could change anytime with any technological advance: people will always find something that is scarce.
Real life is overrated.
Yeah, right, keep on dreaming mate.
Was it Iain M Banks that introduced this term? Anyway, it doesn't look bloody likely anymore if you ask me. We are running out of environment to fuck up and rapidly.
According to several articles recently in mags. like New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) et al. things like fishstocks and other wild species are on the brink of plummeting and we are going to see species disappear in significant numbers in the near future. Go on, call me a tree hugger, but I think it is sad (to say the least) - and it will probably have catastrophic consequences for most of us.
On top of that, resources such as oil and clean drinking water are soon to become scarce. So I think instead of dreaming about 'The Age of Plenty' you should prepare yourself for 'The Age of Only Just Enough If You Are Lucky'.
"This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties."
... would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs"
That is entirely an urban legend, like the 200 mpg carburetor. This did not happen: the grave is empty.
"Big Business will never let this go through, ever."
Not true either, since business can profit from such things if they actually exist
"Corporations
It does not work this way. Look at music: people still prefer to download (legal or not) the products of the major record labels, even though "Self-designed" stuff is all over the place, often legally free.
"Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation,"
Low rate? What do you mean?
and why would people continue to invent things? Currently people create things (for the most part) to make a profit. If there is nothing to protect those profits (copyrights, patents, etc), what motivation is there to create something?
Becuase it will make life easier, duh.
Sheesh, it the patent system were to disappear tommorow, it's not as if people would suddenly stop inventing things.
Problems exist, people invent things to solve those problems. I invent things all the time without patenting them. I invent them because the are useful to me, that's the incentive. Besides, people also do it just for fun.
Where will the money needed to fund the economy come from? Taxation on the purchase on materials needed to use the replicator?
There's so much wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start. Fund the economy? WTF?! Where does the money to fund all the beta-tape manufacturers come from? It doesn't. Nor should it. If everyone can get hot, fresh waffles from their household replicator, we won't really need waffle manfacturers anymore. What crazy idea makes you think we should keep giving them money?
"The economy" would still exist, it would just be different. Different things would be traded. No funding necssary
There seems to be a really weird idea floating around these days that just because you were able to make money with a certain business model, it's the rest of society's responsibility to preserve that situation. It makes me want to scream. (Think Sam Kinison) Should you be forced to buy horse feed just because, once upon a time, people rode horses? If course not the idea is ridiculous. If your business is obsolete, move on with the rest of society.
Life is too short to proofread.
You'd still have to buy raw materials, energy, designs, software, Repairs to your fabricator, newer versions of the fabricator that can make more elaborate products, etc...
Maybe economies will be more centralized around this method of production...
Maybe a lot of blender-assemblers will loose their jobs, but the overall system would still be the same... Think of when Automotive assembly lines went robotic... did that destroy the market for AutoWorkers? did the UAW collapse? no. Some jobs changes, some were ended, but new ones were created too (maybe nobody welds the frames, but somebody welds the robots!)
Think of the infinite new permutations the marketplace would develop for thes products too -
- Your Target/Michael Graves Fabs (everything comes out pastel blue and gray and bulbous)
- etc.
And then theres the Fabs that build Fabs, and those that build them... and all the materials that THEY'RE made of, and all the energy needed to create them.. and all of the food and entertainment and transportation and services and drycleaning and telecomunications and everything else that this development would hardly affect at all!"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." --Benjamin Franklin
No, no, no.
What you are concerned about was "totalitarianism", i.e. the philosophy that the state was all, and all citizens were subservient to it, existing only for the state. This is a separate concept from communism and socialism. The USSR, the Fascists under Mussolini, and the Nazis, were all good examples of totalitarian governments. "1984" was written as a warning against totalitarian policies.
Communism is a little different. It suggests that the means of production should be shared equally by all, and the fruits of the labor be equally divided as well. Communism as suggested by Marx was not evil at all. Modern-day china seems to be making a pretty good go of the idea; I think that aside from being a little overzealous in censorship (and their organ donor program, ha ha), they're doing fairly well.
Socialism (different yet again) suggests that a society's first duty is to its citizens, and that the purpose of government is to take care of the people (rather than, for instance, ensure the welfare of corporations, or wage ridiculous wars to help the oil industry). Canada, the most innocuous nation in the history of nations, is mostly socialist. Do you consider the canucks evil? Aside from the Kids in the Hall, I mean.
Let's be fair, kids.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Holding back technology just to keep enough menial jobs around for everyone is very short-sighted.
what if you could download a cd, literally. Download the iso and actually physically make the cd. Piracy in it's ultimate form, I love it!
None of us are as dumb as all of us.
Previous empires, like Rome and Byzantium, have tried to control everything from IP to the status of individuals, in an effort to protect the interests of the ruling classes. They all collapsed, but after hiccups progress continued.
IP and the threat of IP litigation is in the end an attempt to buck the free market. It gets represented as free-market economics (protecting property is the basis of rule of law etc.) but in reality ALL IP is shared to a greater or lesser degree. It's increasingly hard to point to any genuine "invention" because more and more shared, non-IP education is needed to get to the point of inventing anything (and music is the same - just about all music is now derivative of earlier work.) Once upon a time the calendar and writing were protected secrets. Once upon a time you needed to be a skilled plumber to connect a faucet, now you can get a couple of tools and some simple compression fittings and do it easily and safely yourself. People have not stopped writing, telling the time and plumbing because these are no longer secret. Far from it. The moral seems to be that extending knowledge and power to the people benefits everybody in the long run. It may cause painful readjustment to people who have got very rich by getting into positions of power, but ultimately the world owes nobody a free lunch.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The whole idea of selling people a magic machine whose uses are barely known is new to our generation, but this isn't the first instance. We've already seen the publishing house in a box and the multimedia studio in a box. Now we're looking at the factory in a box.
Of course the holders of certain government-granted rights (copyrights, patents) that are threatened by these new things will want to keep them inside the box. I think we are about to live through a Dark Age of legal repression and control that will make the DMCA look like a parking meter. But at some point it will become impossible to limit this technology to a small set of rights-restricted uses. At the other end of that tunnel is a world we can't even imagine.
"...just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. "
if this was true, and the egine was actually practical, what ever company who bought it would manufactures it. why? simple. money.
You announce and pruduce engine, use your political power to force the end of the gasoline engine for rnviromental reasons.
You own the Patent on anything to do with the only viable alernative. you would make a fortune. A petroleum company tat did this would have a huge increase in stock price, you would have no competitors, and you would still make money for petroleum for other markets(plastics, etc...)
not all countries support patents.
"They use the patents to prevent cheap models from being made, and have the whole thing declared a trade secret to increase their protection beyond that offered by patents"
by definition, you can not patent a trade secret.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, I agree with you on most of these points, but you can use hydrogen with existing rotary motors (they handle the higher heat better than piston engines do) and fuel injection. Hydrogen, then, is just another alternative fuel for internal combustion, fairly interchangeable with natural gas, LP gas, and propane, when you think about it. The difference is in the byproducts. Hydrogen produces steam and not much else. As far as the difficulties in storing it without leakage, you can line your tanks with a thick glass layer, or you can do what Mazda did, which was bind the hydrogen up in a sort of metal matrix, releasing small amounts at a time with an electrical process (that's what the article said, anyway).
But, this speaks to my point: biofuels is just another technology which was never pursued. And, probably won't BE pursued. If you burn corn alcohol in an existing engine type, you're not going to be buying all that expensive fuel-cell gear, or buying a disposable, throwaway car that's 100% electrical. The car companies won't profit as much. Have you no heart? (sarcasm, of course).
This is what I'm talking about. It's about money, not about what is most sensible.
And, as far as generating the hydrogen, well, let me ask you this: we've known how to generate power using wind, waves, geothermal sources, and hydroelectric for decades. Why aren't they in wide use already? Could it be that the oil and coal industries don't want to be replaced, and have enough money to buy politicians? Perhaps? If we were using clean power, we could generate all the hydrogen we wanted. But, we're not, and we don't. And, the reasons for this are exactly the same as the reasons why we're still driving gasoline-powered cars.
Think about it.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects[?]
Interesting to think about, but in all likelihood, the fallout will not be as scary as the current RIAA witchhunt -- for two reasons.
One, it's a lot easier for a layperson to design, say, a chair than to write a good song. There will be plenty of designs floating around for freeware versions of most household objects.
Two, song swapping is easy because you can copy the original product very simply. Physical objects are far different in this regard -- there is no way in the foreseeable future to copy them, given the object itself. It's not like you can just snap a picture of your blender, feed it into your computer, and have it print one out for you. Designs will have to start from scratch, and as such, will typically end up rather different from the original.
What scares me is the idea of people trading designs that are a far cry from being UL listed...
I object to that article, and to the next reply.