Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Moot "Teleportation" Via Destructive 3D Printing
ErnieKey writes Researchers from German-based Hasso Plattner Institute have come up with a process that may make teleportation a reality — at least in some respects. Their 'Scotty' device utilizes destructive scanning, encryption, and 3D printing to destroy the original object so that only the received, new object exists in that form, pretty much 'teleporting' the object from point A to point B. Scotty is based on an off-the-shelf 3D printer modified with a 3-axis milling machine, camera, and microcontroller for encryption, using Raspberry Pi and Arduino technologies." This sounds like an interesting idea, but mostly as an art project illustrating the dangers of DRM. Can you think of an instance where you would actually want the capabilities this machine claims to offer?
The only situations I can see this having any use in is some sort of security model where you make an object that for some security reason isn't supposed to exist in more than one place. I can see this for the whole "only this key can open the briefcase with the documents/money/etc." situation, for example.
Any situation where you don't have the details of what is inside the object but you want them.
Take a step away from the "teleportation" aspect and put the sender and receiver right next to each other. One disassembles the item while the other recreates it. At the end of the process you have the replacement item to stick back into where ever you took it from AND a scan of all the layers inside allowing you to produce more should you so desire.
Once you release your false sense of personal identity, using a device like this (once the technology is advanced enough to work for people) to quickly travel long distances makes perfect sense.
It is surprising how many atheists would reject this, despite the fact that most of them would swear up and down that there is no such thing as a soul, and that consciousness (if it is anything at all) is just a general phenomenon (like gravity) that is not particular to an individual. So, if a person teleports in this way, an atheist should be the first to assert that nobody died and that nothing was lost.
Oh well. Illusion is a hard thing to overcome.