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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.
As our society moved into the industrial revolution ... it meant unrealistic controlls over labor (slavery) had to go.
As society is moving into the information age means unrealistic controlls over information (copyrights, and untangable patented things) half to go.
And as our society moves into the "replicator" age. It means unrealistic controlls over invention and creation (patents) will half to go.
IMHO.
Coming from a CNC background, I can tell you that a company would get seriously PO'ed if their CNC programs (instructions for machining parts) got posted on the web or P2P. I mean, some of the programs are rarely used, or used only once, but any company would defend those as "trade secrets." I can imagine that any sort of "desktop manufacturing" data that would allow you to duplicate something would be treated similarly.
Is it just me or are more companies actually trying to create everything that was in the Sci-fi movies back in the day. Perhaps in my lifetime I could say "beam me up scotty" and actually go somewhere else in an instant.
But who am i kidding.. We all were told we would have flying cars in the year 2000 right?
Technology can never be produced as quick as ones imagination can manifest it....
Not necessarily
Near the end of the article, they talk about how to make complex machines from simple substrates. They've already got designs and concepts for printing electromechanical devices (motors, moving parts) as well as substrates that give off an electrical change when compressed, which can act as a button.
My thought is that the free software movement should act as proactively as possible to release plans for basic building blocks here, so the first company to design a printable motor can't get Intellectual Property to it. Imagine if we all had to pay ConEd royalty rights on motors and generators, etc...
Once these pieces were built, imagine pluggin GNU flexware pieces in modeling software to make Just In Time machines... It'd be like RAD toolbuiding!
I seem to recall reading about this concept in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Has it been used elsewhere in sci-fi?
It is a bad thing however for a Capitalist. We'd end up having a civil war over this.
There are ALOT of people who would rather die than live in a Socialist world. Why do you think there was such witch-hunts to catch communists? Why do you think there was so much propaganda being spewed about how Communists are evil? We still have idiots today who post on slashdot saying Communism is evil and wrong.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
" in a world with no jobs and no work."
The concept that the ability to duplicate infinitely physical objects would result in "no jobs and no work" is a fallacy at best. The ability do duplicate these physical objects would result in a massive loss of jobs for those in the manufacturing industry, no doubt. However, there would be a nearly equal if not greater than equal increase (eventually) in the need for knowledge and service workers. Even if you could create a new computer every time a new technology comes out, you'd still need software developers to write the software, and someone to troubleshoot it when you get the latest outlook virus. In the same sense, we could shift a lot of jobs to industries such as the pharmaceutical industry and try and extend life or at least quality of life for humans.
The economy would need to be restructured, capitalism will probably not be the driving force any more, but I doubt the suicide rate will surge, for most people with deserving jobs already, there would be no need for drastic changes. The guy who dropped out of high school and now solders connections in the blender plant might be SOL, but that's the price paid for progress. Eventually the guy will find another job, even if its sweeping the floors, flipping burgers, or rotating tires.
Go ahead resist progress, hey, that always worked in the animal kingdom, oh wait....
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
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This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. Big Business will never let this go through, ever. Watch and see: they'll wait until it's perfected before they buy it out, and they'll keep it in their own internal design studios forever after.
This is an enabling technology, which permits ordinary people to create their own design, fabrication, and manufacturing shops -- it reduces the barrier to entry so that anyone can play in the product design game. We've already seen from the open source movement what motivated individuals can do without corporate support. Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation, and their habit of producing products that are "just good enough", would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs. Also, product designers and engineers wouldn't desire corporate jobs anymore -- they'd strike out on their own, and the corps would have a hell of a time finding talent, even in the third world (in our wired world, *anyone* would be able to start fielding their designs via the internet, so why would a cash-poor engineer in, say, Southeast Asia work for a corp?). These facts are not lost on manufacturing companies, ok?
I think that one of two things are going to happen.
Possibility number 1: the technology and all patents related to it are bought outright by a group of manufacturers, who limit it strictly to their own internal R+D offices. Of course, patents only last 17 years, right? So one would think that eventually, the tech would get out. Perhaps... Unless they manage to legislate increased patent protection, using this specific issue as a wedge ("Senator, this will destroy the whole economy! We have to do something, blah blah"). Result: the public doesn't get their hands on this for decades, if at all, and big business wins.
2. A group of manufacturers act in collusion, purchasing the company that owns the patents, and they drive the price up so high that only industrial design firms can use the device. 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. Result: the device is never offered to the public, big business wins.
It's a shame, but it's the way of the world.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I don't see this replacing manufactured goods in price. Where this process would be invaluable would be for mechanics, construction workers, etc. All sorts of things could be repaired with this. So many items go in the garbage, not because they are useless, but because they are in need of one minor, obscure part that is no longer in stock. Anyone who has done mechanical or construction work can appreciate the need to be able to duplicate one trivial part that cannot be purchased. I am thinking any auto mechanic would go nuts over such a machine.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Bad logic there: "These communists were bad, so they were not really communists". Not only were they communists, they were typical communists. This same sort of bad logic is used sometimes in discussions of religious history ("those inquisitors were not really Christians...")
Communism is an economic system you really cannot compare the communism to democracy as you seem to be implying. They are very different things. The people mentioned were dictators, using the logic you did would be like saying captialism is evil because the actions of Sadam Husien and Adolf Hitler.
The core of the issue is dictators not the economic system. Communism however is very attractive to dictators in the same manner as firearms are attractive to criminals. It's a tool. It gives them complete control over a country while seeming to be looking after the people's interest.
The point is moot anyway as now is not the time for Comminism if you belive Marx. He belived that comminism will come at the wake of the collapse of capitalism.
Since electronics (though I doubt we're talking about the latest Intel CPU!) and display screens can be made with this technology, along with simple buttons and actuators... I think I could come up with a short list of some fairly nifty items that *I'd* want, anyway.
Throw the geeks of the world at the issue, and I'm pretty sure there WILL be a "Napster of Solid Objects" and a whole mess of trouble with governments and corporations trying to restrict the spread of certain types of plans.
On the other hand, this all depends on the cost of the raw materials and energy requirements, right?
When the printing press was born, together with gunpowder in weapons it brought about the distruction of fudal opression. It allowed new ideas to spread promoting revolution and eventually democracy, the availability of religeous texts lifted the oppressive and conservative warping of the bible propergated by the clergy of the day. The publishing of the classics in vast quantities allowed the commoners to become educated and eventually stand up for themselves.
It was centuries later that it was decided that things printed on these presses should be copied, before then everything was for accidemic uses or was timless like the bible or classical plays or histories. Then someone found out a way to make money from this, create new laws to force royaties. Machinery started to be patented and builders were forced to not use new technology.
Today we stand in a world where entire countries have incomes less than individuals, where the worlds most ecconomically prosperous country exports almost nothing phisical, except maybe old el-paso barito kits, coca-cola concentrate and the occasional calefornian orange. Where the holders of the "interlectual property" that they obtained though a little bit of tenacity or luck, or simply bought like an officer from victorian england buying his commision can dictate the price of the sale of their intangible chattles and the public must buy. Where streamlining, efficiency and outsourcing are the measure of good buisiness in an effort to have as few workers who will work for as little as possible so those who simply manage can take everything.
Today the measure of a physical object is not what it is, it is what it represents. Western "worksmanship" is simply a swoosh slapped onto a shirt made for nearly nothing in a third world country, rather like the way a five hundred dollar program is arranged in dints upon the surface of a worthless disk. If you live in a western country, you already live in a world where the construction is nothing and the concept, or interlectual property is everything. This new manufacturing won't change anything.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Most Americans are poorly educated regarding the Russian revolution (or just about any historical event really). Stalin was the one who founded the dictatorship model, something which Lenin warned people about. Lenin's last writing contatins a warning about the growing bureucracy, and specifically mentions Stalin as a highly unsuitable successor. Due to Russias underdevelopment in the industrial area, Lenin predicted that a reaction to the revolution would follow if countries in Europe didn't join the revolution. The tool for this reaction became Stalin, whose ideology very few marxists support.
The stars that shine and the stars that shrink
in the face of stagnation the water runs before your eyes
SPOILER ALERT!
In the end, we all get allas, which can create anything (up to a certain size) by rearranging and transforming the atoms in the area, and depend on a big catalog of what to make. The allas can make others, so in a few weeks, everyone has one. The book shows what would happen with reasonable accuracy: intellectual property and real estate become the only valuable things. There are artists who sell cool T-shirt designs, and pirates who hang out by the door and make cheap imitations of them. All the manufacturing companies fail, but it doesn't really matter, because everyone has an alla.
The book didn't mention the manufacturing companies attemps to survive, and I think it underestimated them. If the allas had been less user-friendly and not everyone had them, I'm sure the manufacturing companies could have made them illegal, and the short-sighted government would have let them. Obviously this wouldn't work; it's difficult to kill someone who has an alla, so it would be similar to P2P today: illegal but mostly unenforcable.
SPOILER ALERT!
Eventually, the men realize they can hurl huge blocks of TNT at each other, and the aliens and their god take the allas away at the behest of a few humans. Allas are too dangerous for one-dimensional time.
Litigious bastards
Imagine the peer-to-peer conspiracy then. Everybody wearing Armani shits, driving performance cars, and downloading the MP3 player to play the free downloaded music.
Hell, I'll just download the actual bands and keep them in my squalid basement, just like the RIAA.
The value of items based on their scarcity would fade to the cost of their raw materials and energy in such a situation. The only items that would have a high value would be those with a story (the item's historical significance), and that value would be an emotional one.
The value of, say, drugs would only be the cost of the instructions to make them. There would still be a way to profit then. It would be an intellectual property based society.
One problem if such a concept was taken to it's extreme conclusion (the end of manufacturing) would be how anyone would make enough money to pay for the intellectual property needed to produce what they need. Not everyone is going to be an inventor themselves. You still need a way for people to convert their time into money. At the same time, however, once you had the instructions for your basic needs the effort needed to satisfy them would shrink to a trivial amount and most of your efforts would be focused on acquiring plans for luxuries.
You'd end up having a situation similar to the towns of Middle Ages Europe where they were basically self-sufficient and indistinguishable in their products (barring differences in crops). Until manufacturing started (such as the textile mills of Flanders) their biggest distinguishing factors were cultural ones mainly.
One side note, I hope recycling would be able to keep up with all of this home manufacturing. Judging from the amount of paper wasted on unnecessary and botched printouts I could imagine heaps of white test runs dumped in front of people's homes every trash day.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The article misses the whole point. This isn't a efficient way to make things you can make now. It's a way to make things you can't make now. Things with detailed microstructure. Things with moving parts and electronics inside.
This is inherently a slow technology, because you have to build up thick objects layer by layer. But it produces objects that are more "organic", not in the hippie sense, but in the sense of having "internal organs." The first applications will probably be medical devices.
What else? Photonics parts such as switching mirror arrays. Peristaltic pumps. Cell sorters. Sensing devices. Once it's clear what you can do with this approach, there will be new, interesting things to be made that way. But they'll be small, high-detail objects. You're not going to make an I-beam that way, even if you could.
Almost all manufactured objects made in quantity (with the notable exception of wood products) are produced by some kind of "moulding" process. Casting, stamping, lithography, injection moulding, hydroforming, etc. are all "moulding" processes, where material is formed to match a master pattern. All these processes are fast and cheap. That's the great achievement of the first half of the twentieth century.
Machining, by contrast, is slow and expensive. Almost nothing you buy in a store is carved out of a solid block of metal. Many things could be, but that's only done for the prototype. Volume products are made by moulding-type processes. There may be a bit of finish machining, but it started with a moulded blank that looked almost like the finished part.
You can have a computer-controlled milling machine, and all the software to drive it, at home right now. I know two people who do. They don't use them for making routine household objects. It's too slow and too much trouble.
If you want a sense of what one-off manufacturing is like today, download eMachineshop. It's a free CAD program with a difference. After you design the part, use the Job->Material menu to specify the material, and use the Job->Price menu to get an estimate. Then use Order->Place Order to have one made. An automated machine shop in New Jersey will make one and send it to you. Most parts cost $100-$300 for the first one, and a small fraction of that for each additional copy.
The thing doesn't need to mine for raw materials. Recent news stories on breakthroughs in thermal depolymerization (http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm) mention that the process is scalable down to a fully-functional unit that can fit on the back of a pickup truck... easily small enough to fit in your basement. You put garbage in, and get oil (which is what plastics are made of) along with various minerals and other raw materials out. Voila! You get rid of your garbage, heat your home, and feed your desktop manufacturing device. No need to buy refills like you do with an inkjet printer.
This eMachineshop is just the kind of thing that I was a bit curious (and maybe concerned) about when I first read this article. Setting up legit machine shops around the nation would be easier and probably cheaper, from a criminal point of view, than buying weapons off the black market. Once that had been done, it would be no great task to send out the newest designs for replicas, or even improvements, of illegal weaponry. Once a shop had the designs, they could start making their own weapons. It would be a perfect front, and in the long run, it would be a time and money saver. Wonder why nobody's doing that already?
Unpleasantries.