Wednesday, September 20, 2017

3D Printer Filament Is Reinventing Everything

By Dorothy Miller


Very few of the best minds on Earth could have conceived of the radical direction technology has taken in recent years. Fewer still could have imagined that the invention which is set to change everything about our lives would start as a toy for artsy-craftsy technology chasers. Truth is that a revamped copy machine along with a few spools of 3D printer filament is the new recipe for anything.

Those first brave souls to pry open their crate and attempt to comprehend the owners manual barely knew what they held in their hands. They learned how to be inventors for the invention, while the world slept. It was not until average people began to understand exactly how this technology could impact their lives, improve it, before the world began to take notice.

Some of the first things the world saw coming from these machines were Holiday ornaments. Some of them had lights that charged up from sunlight during the day, and many of them had minute, mechanical, moving parts that chimed as they wound their way through a universe of perpetual motion. Those ornaments were very likely the fire lit in many minds, and the technology took an amazing leap none could have foreseen.

There are many children who, for whatever reasons, are born with hands, arms, feet, limbs missing. When a parent of such a child saw these tiny machines hanging from artificial trees, ornamenting the Holidays of strangers, an idea suddenly emerged into concept. A parent made a child an artificial hand that was radically Transformers in appearance, and could be redesigned over and over as they grew.

As the materials available for these printers have expanded, so have the objects people have learned to fashion from them. Some of the most unique musical instruments ever seen are now just a print away. Many such tools of sound have been based on those we are already familiar with, but some are completely unique creations and there remains only one like them.

Not even fashion will be safe from the flood of brilliant creation being independently generated by average people. With so few limits to what can be done, even the clothing itself has expanded outside of the second dimension. The mind of genius with the hands of technology can now exist in every single home, everywhere on the planet, limited only by the availability of the filaments they use.

Now, here is where the story takes the strangest and most unbelievable twist yet. Some lab geek thought to themselves, what if we reproduced synthesized stem cells in much the same way, through programmed repetition of a design. Now we are looking at a future where we can be as alcoholic as we desire so long as we sober up long enough to print ourselves a new liver.

Now we KNOW we will be pushed to drink because three-dimensional printing has just replaced every warehouse worker, seamstress, artisan instrument creator, and the entire medical community. It would seem that this is telling us it is time for the human race to rethink everything we ever imagined our future could be. There are no limits, but we are going to have to find some new ways to keep ourselves occupied.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment