3D Printers: An Economic Game-Changer Pt 2

Previously I spoke about the current state of 3D printing and rapid prototyping. It’s a fascinating field; right on the cusp of a revolution which I believe will profoundly change the world we live in. Conventional Economics is in for a shake up and for better or worse thing will be very different in ten, twenty or fifty years time. In my more optimistic moments I envision a utopian world not dissimilar to Star Trek where universal replicators can create anything we want and people are freed from labour to engage in only the most worthwhile pursuits. The cynic in me on the other hand sees endless litigation and licensing laws put in place by a dwindling manufacturing sector to try to throttle the progress of desktop prototypers. I could draw endless analogies with big media’s attempts to fight online piracy and indeed the manufacturing sector having seen what’s becoming of Hollywood’s fight for its intellectual property will be watching the growth of hobbiest 3d printers with suspicion. If I were to make a copy of a gadget which was molecularly identical to one designed by apple or Samsung (to name two apparently litigious companies) I would be stealing right? That said who’s going to know or stop me for that matter? If the rise of the internet has thought us anything it’s that for every attempt to protect IP by a big company there’s a thousand new ways to circumvent it. 3D printing will be the same. There will be endless attempts to curtail it but in the end anyone who wants to pirate a design can and will be it a beanie baby or a gun.

So where does that leave us. In a world where information is free and material goods are becoming freer every day what place will be left for large manufacturing firms? Not much. They’ll be pushed into the margins becoming more specialized making niche items of high value, exotic materials or things that are too big to fit in your desktop printer. The 3^rd or is it 4^th industrial revolution is coming and there simply won’t be a place for many of these obsolete firms just like there isn’t much of a place for cottage industry nowadays. I won’t quote Marx here but he was pretty keen on people owning the means of production, maybe he was just a century or two out.

Innovation is likely to skyrocket in the fields of product design and engineering when everyone has access to the machines. Anyone with an idea will be an inventor or an artist. Crowdsourcing of designs will be the norm of the day. I can see a system where after downloading an object from an online repository such as thingiverse today people will simply post their feedback and subtle changes will be made to the design. The next person to download it won’t get the wonky power button for example.

Finally one of the most intriguing aspects of 3D printers will be their ability to reproduce themselves. Because of this conventional economics won’t apply. There will be a tipping point where they achieve the ability to reproduce and at that point their numbers will explode. Everyone who wants one will have one. As great as that sounds I like to think a bit beyond households full of gadgets. I can imagine a shipping container with a generator and 3D printer being dropped into disaster zones to rebuild them. Dropped into remote villages to develop them and hopefully someday dropped onto other planets to build on them and maybe even terraform them. That’s only possible with machines that can reproduce otherwise the initial investment of time and energy would be too high. The possibilities are fascinating and the best part is we’re only a few years from seeing the first real impacts of these machines.