Yay! it is happening!

[miriam_e]

Fab@Home -- a wiki on how to make your own fabricators/replicators/3D printers/rapid prototypers, or whatever you want to call them.

The next big revolution in human history is beginning at last -- the democratisation of the means of production.

Just imagine how young kids will use such machines to experiment with making robots, sculptures, and machines nobody has yet ever thought of.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Replicators, like Star Trek?

You had my hopes up.

(PS, your HTML is slightly broken)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I think of the term "replicator" more in the Von Neumann way: a machine able to make copies of itself. I wonder if the machine pictured above can actually do that. Even if it can't yet, it is a start in that direction.

One day I hope we have replicators in the Star Trek meaning. About a decade ago I read about a guy working at one of the big US universities on a machine that manipulated matter beams to create objects in a similar way to how you can use light to make holograms. I wonder what happened.

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

I think it'll be a long time until we need to worry about (alarmist predictions of) grey goo taking over the world at an exponential rate...but the desktop fab machines they're developing presently are incredible! The design's out there in the public domain and will only be refined further.
There's so much potential, it's mind-boggling.
But, I have some worries, too...my main concerns are threefold:
Firstly, that the media will somehow be controlled as major manufacturers/brands stifle the range of designs available with mass-produced knock-offs.
Secondly, that over-zealous governments will regulate the use of such machines to such an extent that they're no longer practicable.
As horrible as both of those outlooks sound, look at what's happened to CDs, MP3s and music over the past few years.
Thirdly, I worry about the masses of garbage the people will produce, at the cost of resources and energy. There has to be a way of reclaiming/recycling the materials.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Wonderful comment! These are exactly my concerns too.

I actually don't think we will ever have to worry about the grey goo scenario. It seems to me that a fundamental limitation on energy in vs energy out is ignored by such worries. I just don't think grey goo is possible.

The major hope for the desktop fabricator machines is open source. That is the only thing that can save it from manufacturers and government control. Luckily this is exactly how it is working. Of course it could all go horribly wrong (as in the mp3 and filesharing examples) but somehow I think the genie being out of the bottle will be far more powerful. A worst case will have the developed world enact draconian legislation to outlaw or control such machines, but all that will do is let the developing world glide effortlessly past us as they take our place as pre-eminent technologists. This is already happening to some extent with solar power (it is happening mostly in the third world) and filesharing (spanish is the language that is growing faster than any other in the filesharing world).

Wast is the greatest threat. The trick is to use recyclable and harmlessly degrading materials for the feedstock. I don't think energy will be a great problem except in the earliest stages. Transporting finished articles will always be more expensive than transporting raw feedstock, and if the feedstock material can be produced onsite (say as a yeast or algae protein) then even that concern is allayed. The energy used in running such a machine should be fairly low, and will diminish as more efficient designs develop.

So on balance I think the future is very bright.