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It has been nearly an underground movement building up over several years, mostly on the happy enthusiast level, but several commercial projects have been launched as well. For some it sounds like something out of Star Trek, being able to tell a computer to create a real, physical object, and then have it actually be made into a real world object. However, it’s not a replicator I’m talking about. The 3D Printer is quite real, and very useful for several applications ranging from mass production to hobby use.

They are expensive and don’t have all the capabilities you might want from such a device, but this is only today. Where will we be in a few years time? Look at how the smartphone was once horribly complicated, expensive, and lacking in capability and compare it to what we have today. A future where the 3D Printer is very real, and realistic for the average person to own is inevitable.

Of course any very disruptive technology will make a lot of people very nervous in their wallets. If people are all of a sudden able to make their own spare parts for devices and machines they own, almost a whole market would be made obsolete almost over night. A lot of jobs would be not at risk, but doomed to disappear in a very short time-frame.

Beyond the work market, we would have to rethink how a lot of things we take for granted currently works. How will, for instance, copyright work in a world where you can make objects at home, that comes from a device that a company or individual owns the right to? Will all companies have to take a stance weather their products are OK to make spares for yourself, or will they just condemn it as a vile act or pirate copying. Just like the music industry and the movie industry treated file sharing some ten years ago?

I have no doubts in my mind that there will be a lot of lobbying from both sides, although we can only assume that the side with the most money to toss around isn’t the small companies and enthusiasts. Politicians will have to make the call if this new phenomenon of making things with 3D Printers is desirable in society or not, at least on a wide scale.

It brings to my mind the tale of when the first automated textile looms were introduced, and a lot of people realized they were out of a job. The action they chose to take was to break the machines by tossing their wooden shoes into the gears, causing them to break. If the stories are correct, this is how we got the word “sabotage”, as the wooden shoes were called “sabot”. Not that I think there will be any tossing of wooden shoes, or other kinds of shoes for that matter, into 3D Printers. Just rest assured that there will be those who won’t like this development at all, and they will fight it most fiercely!

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine or app.net @streakmachine. (But you won't find him on Facebook!)

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Robert Falck

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