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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.
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
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
"This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties."
Hydrogen combustion is a loss. You have to use energy to get the hydrogen in the first place, almost always by breaking water down by hydrolysis (high current through water - oxygen goes to one pole, hydrogen to the other). You're going to lose energy in the thermal inefficiencies of that process, you're going to lose some in leakage (H2 is a *very* small molecule), and then you still have the same inherent inefficiencies of an internal combustion engine that you have with any other fuel.
All hydrogen does is to displace the energy use (and pollution) to a different place, it doesn't give you any extra, or free, energy. A more logical approach would be to pursue biofuels that can be burned in existing vehicles (biodiesel, or more alcohol in gasoline blends)...uses existing infrastructure (gas stations, tankers, etc), works in existing vehicles, and doesn't need the world to change several expensive things all at once to work.
Hydrogen power might be appropriate for some things, but cars are not one of them. Too many things to change at once, to get it to be widely adopted.
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.