Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time 109
jameshowison writes: "We're doing a presentation at the O'Reilly P2P conference next week on what happens when you merge the technologies of P2P with those of 3D printers or 'Fabbers'. If you thought the record companies were pissed off, wait till manufacturers realise that P2P will affect them too!" Yum, tasty wheat.
Fabbers (Score:3)
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Re:Key question (Score:2)
It's a lot less incremental than processors though. Completely different approaches give radical changes. Computers are easier to measure. Turing machines only have 2 meaningful variables really, speed and memory. All digital computers are mathematically equivalent.
RP is different, material qualities, strength, versatility (not all processes can create all geometries), speed, accuracy, cost, ease of cleanup. It's hard to quantify.
For instance, a couple of researchers for hitachi in Japan, and some academics in Oxford, have recently extended scale downwards considerably, down to almost nano-scale.
3dsytems created the first machines, laser based, then later created bubble-jet based machines. The bubble-jet technology has potential to be cheap and accurate, but doesn't have strength or versatlity of stereolithography machines...
Re:Been there, done that (Score:2)
Hah ! Come on, you don't really mean that do you ? Technology always interferes with the status quo, that's the whole point.
When my grandmother was a little girl, she went to school in a horse and cart. Cars had been invented but nobody in her town had ever seen one. Since then the growth curve has steepened dramitically, hell it's almost vertical. The changes I see in my lifetime will be more extreme than those she saw. Things change, people have short memories, limited imagination and they deliberately insulate themselves against those changes, but change occurs regardless. The changes one can reasonably expect in 50 years are profound enough to make me scream in terror.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:3)
You're right of course. The precise material properties are tremendously important. Even if chemical composition is the same, yield strength of plate metal depends upon roll schedule, anneal time etc. However, these problems are not as insurmountable as all that. With RP manafacturing technology, you can actually control the precise macro-structure of the material,eg create structures with custom sized bubbles in a regular pattern, and with some processes you can vary the microstructure too by adjusting time between ejection of bubble to control anneal time precisely or you could control alloy composition for every different cubic gram of material. This stuff will be controllable at a level that traditional processes can only dream about.
As the technology gets better RP manafucturing processes will be able to build structures far lighter and stronger, with desired resonance frequencies and all sorts of other cool exotic shit. It's not there yet, but give it 10 years, maybe 20... the technology will improve.
Been there, done that (Score:4)
It was dead fun working at 3dsystems though. I wrote a translator so I could grab cool looking VRML models off the net and print them out as solid objects. As far as I know, I was the first person to do this. Fun to come to work in the morning and have a vat full of models of the Enterprise waiting for you.
Manafacturers don't have to hang up their boots just yet though. The current machines generally print in a single material, plastic, wax, or some such. It will be a while before you go to the mechanic and he prints out a new transmission instead of ordering one from Ford. However already, you can create a cast and injection mold a small run of parts, accuracy is around 1/1000 of an inch on the better machines. Currently takes around 10 hours of so for a 10 inch cubed model.
However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too. This won't do humanity a blind bit of good until we move over to a post capitalist society though. Capitalism is a good mechansim for efficient distribution of scarce resources but when wealth is in the form of information, capitalism only works by enforcing false scarcity on the information.
Re:no more drug control (Score:1)
This leads into the interesting hall of mirrors where it is illegal to sell a molecular fabber that can build a less constrained molecular fabber or any part thereof!
OpenSourcerers [opensourcerers.com]
Ice Fabbers (Score:2)
Much as the military has been pushing for the ability to deliver damage with energy instead of ammunition(because ammunition requires supply lines, separation of parts, and so on, while power simply requires any of a thousand sources), ice fabbers only require water to do their work. In my mind, the temporary nature of the material(which can even be three dimensional and thus reflective of its internal structure!) is outweighed by the near-zero marginal costs and surprising flexibility of such a device.
This company seems like they're just trying to tweak manufacturers into making noises(thus validating them to VCs who will give them money). It's like the old obsession over plastics, only spoofed into the P2P/Napster/No-Money-Economy model. The sheer coolness of arbitrary ice sculptures belies the fact that very few materials build correctly layer-by-layer--in other words, since your materials are limited, you can't go off and download a car or even a rolex--the parts won't last!
Arbitrary chimeras will come before arbitrary rolexes. Creatures are self-assembling, rolexes aren't.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Fabbing (Score:1)
Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
This reminds me of some Canadian cartoon where a guy invented a transporter that actually created a copy of a person and then destroyed the original. In the end, he was convinced into delaying the destroying of the original by 5 minutes and meeting him first. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
"Desktop Manufacturing" (Score:4)
I'd come to pretty much the same conclusions over the last few months. I've been talking to engineer friends about the machines that sinter metal powders with lasers, the UV-sensitive polymers, and the starch bubble-jet printer, and the possible combination of them with the various plastic electronics components still being developed.
I applied Moores Law (probably not directly relevant, but a good bechmark nonetheless) to the current state-of-the-art, which is a washing machine sized device that can sinter plastic powder. A place here in town will take your CAD files and return a plastic part for about US$180 a pop.
I calculated we'll have microwave-sized 'fabbers' as a common household appliance in a little less than 15 years.
That means us early apopters will have expensive 'hobby' kits in just less than ten.
The main action will remain in commercial prototyping up until then. It will probably be a common commercial practise in about five years.
Right now the only users are the commercial and educational 'early-adopters' with specific needs that are filled by the fairly primitive tech we have now. Automated milling machines are currently a far superior tech if you want to do metal, for example.
Of course, the very existence of these machines is likely to push the curve forward by an unpredictable amount.
Just consider: fifteen years from now, well look back on all those jokes about ordering things over the internet, ("how do you fit it down the wires! Ha, ha!") and not get it.
The main obstacles are as follows:
* Sintering (melting powders together) has precision limits caused by heat transfer in the material.
* Light-sensitive polymers are still rather nasty chemicals. They're also quite brittle.
* Plastic electronics need to become available in dye/powder form. This will take a while. (And they will never beat silicon for high-performance tasks)
* You need infrastructure to ship the raw materials. They don't just magically materialize in the print-head, you know.
* Recycling all these things is going to become an issue.
But, yes. 'Fabbers' are another great step down the path. Open Hardware, here we come. (And the advantage is, it's easier to design a plastic toy than your average piece of software)
If you want a good historical analogy, you can't go past printing. From Gutenberg, to desktop publishing, to the web.
Can't wait.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
Many products are actually made from a trivial variety of materials. Most toys are made of plastic, and many toys don't really have many moving parts. For example, action figures. In fact, I think action figures would be especially vulnerable because a great deal of their cost is from movie industry royalty markup.
The technology will improve and get cheaper. I think at various steps along the curve, there will be new sets of things it makes economic sense to manufacture at home.
At some point, the technology will be good enough and cheap enough that you can fabricate fabricators. Prehaps, at first, this will result in a sort of analog degredation effect like you see with tapes, but eventually, it'll make more sense to get a fabricator from your neighbor than from the factory.
I would actually guess that the real overhead in many types of manufacturing comes from marketing and distribution (just like with music). Both of those costs would become unrecoverable with fabricator technology.
In short, I think you're being shortsighted. :-)
Re:Wow, someone has drunk a little to much coffee. (Score:2)
Eventually nanotech will work. It is obvious that our bodies, among other things, are natural occuring nano-machines and that there is a large amount of interest in miniturizing and new fabrication techniques. Eventually that will lead to practical nanotechnology.
As the Net (includes the Internet and all future Internet technologies which are not yet named because they don't even exist yet) advances bandwidth will grow as well as improving of our concepts of what forms of communication are possible. Eventually P2P will be king as everyone will want to be able to share what they have directly making the client-server Internet just a subset of P2P.
I think it's fairly obvious that these P2P functional object fabbing will eventually become popular and that'll drive the above technologies to higher quality and lower prices creating that nice little positive spiral.
Of course every new technological jump shakes our world view but I do think you'd have to admit that the sort of jump that destorys our economical model and even our concepts of what is reality is a shattering thing. Probably an event such as that has never happened in the entire history of the human race. Stopping it is probably impossible so we better damn well get ready.
Sure it sounds sci fi'ish (doesn't everything? hell some days I open the news and am shocked they have already managed something that should be in Star Trek) but none of it is against the laws of science and for the most part it's all just based on many small changes happening. If you don't understand the issues enough to understand what the likely converging technologies will be that's fine but it doesn't stop others of us from thinking about it and talking about it.
It so happens that I actually think Gibson has a very poor understanding of technology and it's usually reflected in his books. I do enjoy some of his works but I much prefer Bruce Sterling or Neal Stephenson, both of which auctually do a lot of research and have a good idea of what they are talking about. I hear more of this when listening to friends of different sciences talk than from sci fi.
Maybe you should hang out in the field more and get some expossure to some working researchers before you stamp stuff as drivel. If you want to find it funny though that is fine. Anyone with grammar as poor as mine deserves to be laughed at now and then.
Wow someone sees the light! (Score:3)
Re:Bzzzt! Wrong answer. (Score:1)
It'd effectively make the cost pretty low.
Re:no more drug control (Score:1)
New forms of money (Score:2)
You can expect some serious resistance from the government. In fact, I would say that using energy as a form of money, simply will not be tolerated. It will be made illegal to do this, assuming it isn't illegal already.
Why do you think we left the gold standard? It was so that government could (sort of) control the economy. They used the non-backed dollar to artificially lower interest rates (to encourage growth regardless of whether or not it is needed) and to create inflation in order to "tax" the possession of money. Do you think they will ever let this power slip from their hands? It's going to take a revolution before money is ever out of the government's control.
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Re:Last time I checked (Score:2)
Given enough time, either the cost will decrease, or the utility increase, to the point where most homes have one.
Think about cars - dirty, noisy, smelly, dangerous, damaging to the environment, expensive, incredibly useful; it's a rare home that doesn't have at least one, despite all their bad points.
Cheers,
Tim
Yes, though not really peer 2 peer (Score:2)
Re:Gibson novel.. (Score:1)
In that world, the economy revolved around the "Feed". The pipeline of useful molicules that was fed into your house to be used by your nano-assembler device.
It is somewhat entertaining to visualize how 'build on demand' products will change things. Many SciFi authors have theorized on how society will be affected when we can have localised micro-factories all over the place. Imagine a vending machine that dispenses built on demand autoparts.
Of course, none of this is relevant to the article, but I expect that as computer-based manufacturing on the small scale becomes more common, that we will see value being based not as much in the product but rather in two areas:
1) Design. Unusual or interesting designs will be the commodity of choice.
2) Hand-made items. This was addressed in "The Diamond Age" as well. In a world where everyone can have precision-made items on demand, the hand-made item gains value for its uniqueness.
Later,
Mike
Chaos Erupts (Score:3)
I can see the headlines now:
Neal Stephenson Sues Fabber Industry For Prior Art
Then the flash cartons:
Neal Stephenson says Fabbers Bad!
Then the lawsuit:
Neal Stephenson sues Fabster for anonymous digital distribution of "A Young Lady's Primer"
-BlueLines
Arrow in the Head (Score:2)
First of all, it was clearly a joke.
Secondly, Jeebus made the world in his sacred image, which mortals are not permitted to look upon. However, he doesn't take offence at the attempts, he just sends his microscope gnomes to fake all the results of particle physics, just as he sends telescope gnomes to hold pictures of galaxies up between the astronomer and the big cow's hide with holes poked through it to let in the light of the phlogiston. He enjoys it, and loves silly people like scientists.
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Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
Gibson novel.. (Score:1)
Political correctness... (Score:1)
Oh gawd! The political correctness crowd is at it again. Back in the olden days, we used to say cat in the jar [slashdot.org] instead!
Key question (Score:2)
--LP
Re:Spam Fabbers foiled (Score:1)
Then decide if you want to hit the 'fab' or 'delete' button.
TRANSFORMERS! (Score:1)
Seriously though, the next step in that war would be to give a more detailed analysis of the item to be fabbed. Would you render a trigger guard with 100 moving parts and 20 rotating knives listed in the fab specs? Think of the potential for Antivirus companies to scan the models and see if they are safe to fab...
Re:TRANSFORMERS! (Score:1)
I didn't consider the possibility of the message sent to the fab being anything other than dumb data: ie a complete CAD model of the item to be fabbed, which must of necessity list all the parts & how they fit together.
AFAIK, that is how it is done now & has no reason to change soon. Think of it as not the halting problem, but the MS-Outlook problem: When you allow your transmitted data to be run, this is open to abuse.
Even if it was a programatic description of the item to be made, then run it against a virtual fab to see the resulting model. It's like print vs. print preview: programatically, all that differs is the type of canvas the progam draws on.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:1)
This is an interesting field and does it's uses particularly some of the work that is being done by medics. I've seen nice examples of models created from 3d scan data, although again when it comes to making replacement parts I believe they fall back to using high speed machining centres.
The long sighted may want to keep an eye on this for their kids but I wouldn't put off any major purchases in the mean time.
Fly in the ointment (Score:2)
we can only know exactly *what* something is, or exactly
*where* something is. Not both.
This, unfortunately, puts the mouth on precision fabbing.
In the future, we will be able to build a Rolex at home,
we just won't know *exactly* where it is.
Re:Fabbers (Score:1)
Wow, someone has drunk a little to much coffee. (Score:1)
Rapid prototyping does not replicate anything more than physical form. Nanotech (currently) is little else than a trained circus of bacteria for fleas to watch. "The Net" already allows people to trade ideas in raw data format (But, I assume you want to trade - say 250 Megs worth of (related) data comprising a particular person's complete understanding of a given topic, in a relatively instantaneous timeframe though - which isn't possible).
Everything we do "shatters our world view," as it (the world) is a noncausal system and until we do someting, we don't know the full implications of our actions upon it (think about predicting the stock market for an example).
Your predictions seem based in a very bizare non-reality and are generally, unrelated to the story at hand. As humor, spoof and satire of some of the other posts here, your posting ranks high, as an actual new thought...
Re:Ice Fabbers (Score:1)
I would fathom a guess that crystal growth is probably the more likely prototyping technology of the future, as you can impart specific structural qualities in a given substance. But, until you can "grow" a random glass in a specific form, this won't be massively useful either...
Your comment about very few substances fitting the layer by layer construction paradigm is well thought out.
Um... Not any time soon. (Score:2)
Ok, so the prototype models I've seen are made usually out of a few different types of things. Either a solid piece of plastic or wax is cut with a laserlight, or a resin is hardened with a lazer level by level (and the structure is effectively grown).
The former is the older process, and it does not lend itself to irregularites in the material, requires additional material (as a bunch is thrown away) and builds solid objects which cannot be hollow. The latter (resin) allows a structure to be grown hollow, but commonly you spend a couple hours with a exacto blade cutting out the flange as it builds these wells in which to build the resin figure. Basically, you can model more complex parts with the latter process (things with slots, ball joints and so on).
The bottom line is however, you can't copy - say - the schematic of a board. We won't see people copying electronics, building their own chips, and/or duplicating custom ASIC designs...
From my experience, the only things useful for these kinds of prototyping could remotely be useful in is prototyping parts which a good machinist could build quicker, faster, and cheaper with or without a C&C mill/lathe. I guess you could also use it to build / research custom orthodics, as they used the resin prototyper to commonly build feet. But once again, the resin material is relatively toxic to the touch and prone to breakage, so this would probably not be an ideal application either.
Yeah, so remember, when you buy that rolex off the guy on the street in NYC, while it probably isn't real, it wasn't (and probably won't be) fabbed by rapid-prototyping equipment - just a couple hundred kids working in a sweat-shop in southeast asia...
I agree, but not from this tech. (Score:2)
The technology for downloading molecules is relatively non-existant, as the alchemists of the middle ages found out. While scientists of the 20th century have since proved, you can make gold from lead - it just costs more than the made gold is worth, "simple molecules" (which are way more complex than an element) will be nigh impossible to construct from "thin air."
But overall, yes, at home labs will become more prevalent, advances in plant biology will allow for more divers growing climates for various greeneries to grow in, and ultimately the WoD will be called off in persuit of easier and cheaper legislation...
Re:Been there, done that (Score:2)
On a limited scale, with a limited scope, an astounding *maybe*. There become timeframe issues of getting everybody to want to upgrade their equipment. The logistics of Y2K alone was only as successful as it was because it had to be. This is a technology which is optional, requires the retooling of major industries, and so on.
Take the rain gutter industry. Extrusion technology has been around long since before the first playdough press, but only within the last 5 years have custom length rain gutters extruded from the back of a truck become a reality.
All I'm saying is, I can fully agree that the technology for this stuff will be available in 10 to 20 years, but personal use and wide manufacturing use will be nearly non-existant. Technology can only be accepted as long as it does not interfere (now) with the status quo.
No parts manufacturer would want to be without one of these to build thier own parts with, but they would be about as unwilling as a dog at the veteranarian to just give up the schematics and plans for their flux capacitor and have it fabbed at a given store.
So my predicted timeframe for just this event (keep in mind this is basically wild guessing):
10 years technology to fab parts in an timely viable way.
15 years technology to fab parts in a structurally viable way.
20 years technology to fab parts of a limited variety of materials
50 years technology to fab single material parts in a economically vaiable way
65 years technology for a handfull of manufacturers to use the current product to construct their products (as opposed to a C&C mill/lathe, manufacturing process)
75 years to model internal parts (not just outside skeleton - think chips and such)
85 years to fab internal parts as well as external parts.
95 years to do this quickly.
100 years to make these machines cost effective
105 years parts stores such as NAPA have those fabbers and no longer have their small parts distributed
... and so on...
Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters. (Score:2)
I doubt it. Plus I'd argue that flying represented a greater technological step than manufacturing systems. The air previously was only accessed by zeplins or hot air baloons, everybody wanted to fly (which has a controlable movement portion which neither baloon nor zeplin achieved). We have a myriad of ways to produce any one product nowdays. As I've said in other responses, there are different methods of manufacturing which are suited for different products, but some are better or worse.
Nowdays screws and nails are stamped out, but previously they were spun on a lathe, cast or smelt. There are companies which still do the other older methods, but for the most part that is because of custom dimensions or technological availability. The point is, flying hadn't been done. Making a screw - well that already exists.
And I'd point out that the same quote applies to the prediction that this technology will exist. Its use is an oxymoron, and I hope you really meant it as such.
The original poster probably did know what he was talking about. If nothing else, the fact that this could elimiate or reduce shipping will prevent and delay this... that's taking on the teamsters.
Ok, a correction then. (Score:2)
If a new technology is not presented in a manner which is similar enough to an old technology, that a significant (signifcant does not mean over 50%) proportion of the proponents of the old technology embrace it, and fails to establish a strong new customer base then that technology will fail.
This has been seen in DvX, where the subscription component was too foriegn for people who are now willing to rent a DVD at blockbuster.
Yes, I agree that we will see changes, but changes which only the current industries allow. As we move towards a mega-corp erra (where people have less and less of a problem with massive mergers) then our choices as to what we use and what we do become limited. Yes, thousands of smaller businesses will be founded, and most will be swatted away. Yes, there will be a handful which create true new elements of technology, but unless they eventually rise themselves to a megacorp status, they will be swallowed, consumed, or ruined by a rival company. Diversification of a company to control all aspects of distrabution is an economic goldmine. This is how Rockafeller(sp?) used the railroads to make his money. If you control the steel, the barrels, the rails, and the trains, then you control the cost of whatever good someone wants to ship, and every real means necessary to do so.
While yes, tech development has increased in quantity, I would argue that we have developed a greater quantity of less-useful inventions. I will site as an exception though, the biomedical industry, which has continued to always look for a better stick.
The electric lighting system, the car, the plane, the rocket, the television, the computer, and the semiconductor were all revolutionary. TiVo, the Ab-Rocker, the juicer, and the palm pilot however are not in the same league of invention quality. Should I begin to discuss pattents on "one click shopping?"
While I believe rapid product development would be in the "revolutionary" category, I believe there are enough interests threatened by this, that it will be discouraged.
One of our most successful inventions from a "it works" standpoint was an autonomous natural gas pipe inspection unit. It was requested to be developed by several natural gas companies. The problem with many utility companies is that when they know about a problem, the must continute to monitor the problem, or fix it. This is expensive, so the utilities chose not to develop the product any more. Really, they would have been happier with a little box that blinked and told them nothing. It is all too common for a product which provides useful or corporately unhealthy information to a given utility to be... "dumbed" to the point of uselessness (the little blinking box).
When you develop a product which builds "anything," your manufacturers will be threatened. I can garountee that it is not in their best interest to devlop it... hence, at best we'll get a "widget maker" or an "enhanced widget maker." Even still, as the joke goes, they would make sure that it only works using the substance unobtainium.
Re:Tea...Earl Grey..Hot. (Score:3)
Yes, though, holgraphic image displays do have interesting similarities, but so do 3d video cards.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:4)
However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too.
Cool that you wrote the stuff. That's gotta be some pretty cool code. However, manufacturing will probably not make that kind of switch *ANY* time soon.
Manufactured parts come in a variety of materials formed in a variety of ways. Not all parts can be built in any one specific way - not because of the cost - but because of the material structure, the stresses which the material will experience, and so on. Casting is cool for engine blocks, but I would hate to see it used for body panels.
Different parts not only have different thicknesses of materials, but different structural makeups. Pressing a metal weakens and strengthens it vastly different from stamping, forging, or casting. Sheet alumininum will respond quite differently to outside forces than say, a part spun from aluminum bar stock.
I guess, that plastic parts have a better chance of being usefully replicated, but traditionally the processes used (injection blow molding, rotational molding, extrusions, and so on) are usually used to produce the original product because it is simple, easy and quick. Ten hours to build a shampoo bottle, or a half a dozen legos is unacceptable when the manufacturing process for producing them turns out hundreds or thousands in that amount of time.
While I agree, there will be an increased role of these prototype modelers in the coming decade, the replicators from star trek are - well - not. This story is FUD.
Edible? (Score:3)
Doughnuts for all!
Or, better yet, little edible figurines of Metallica!
"Forbidden doughnut..." --Homer Simpson
Re:Fabbers (Score:2)
Now, this is always possible, and companies use laws etc. to try and protect their goods.
What is becoming interesting now is that certain types of goods, that we call software, are becoming extremely easy to copy by the average joe. The point of their presentation is to observer that eventually fabbers will mean that hardware has this problem too.
But but but (Score:2)
Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
Once this can be done at the molecular or atomic level, then you can make gold, heroin, a ferrari, or any other desirable item out of your garbage, mud, sewage.
Heroin, yes. A Ferrari, yes. Gold, no. If you want something made of gold, then you will have to put gold into your nanotech replicator.
To transmogrify other elements into gold, a lot more energy is required than can be done with even a hypothetical nanotech assembly replicator. To change atomic nuclei is an entirely other ballpark than just placing atoms next to each other.
At the very least youll need a particle accelerator-plugin to your replicator, in order to achieve the vast energies needed to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion between atomic nuclei. ;-) There is a significant radiation hazard too, both diretly from leaked accelerated heavy particles, and from radioactive decay of unstable isotopes created as a secondary product.
/Dervak
Re:Spam Fabbers foiled (Score:1)
10 minutes later, a rabid flesh-eating robot shaped like a paintball-gun-triggerguard emerges...
Re:TRANSFORMERS! (Score:1)
But yeah, this will be a godsend for the antivirus companies. "In other news, a Cleveland woman was killed by the self-morphing encrypted radioactive fab virus when she clicked on a 'warm fuzzy bunny' in her inbox. If you see a warm fuzzy bunny in your inbox, do _not_ click on it. Her remains are so highly radioactive that they were immediately transported to a toxic waste dump by lead-suited workers from the nearby power plant. Experts say the neighborhood may be habitable again in 25 years."
what the recording industry is really afraid of (Score:1)
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:1)
Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
--Fesh
Now you see the future (Score:2)
Now you have connected the parts together to see the future. Well done.
Although this is all early generation, it will be the kind of thing that is "in principle" on the path towards star trek type replicators.
Re:Gibson novel.. (Score:1)
A good read, cryptic at times though.
Alex
Yeah! (Score:1)
Imagine any kind of appliance adjusted to you and only you from superautomatic armchairs with custom inlays to your TV remote control which is crafted to be part of your hand. Finally a remote I can handle with my fat, thick fingers! This is worth waiting and not dying of a heart attack and general slagging...
Tasty Wheat... (Score:1)
Maybe they got it wrong...
Maybe that's why chicken tastes like so many other things...
Home "fabbing" = folly (Score:1)
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:2)
(circa 1960) One of my girlfriends has a computer in her office. I don't see why anybody should care about them.
-- Computers are very slow.
-- There's a limited number of things you can do with them.
-- Basic economics tells you that they are no threat to the typewriter industry.
-- Reports stored on magnetic tape don't have the durability of printed documents.
Technology is always improving. Seriously folks, Just imagine this: "Mom, can you fab me another Pokemon action figure?". Give it 10 or 20 years at the most.
Last time I checked (Score:1)
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Re:Last time I checked (Score:1)
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Tea...Earl Grey..Hot. (Score:1)
I think we are a long way from that. But, this does prove interesting for holographic image displays. No model boat -- instead a 3d image until you get bored with it. Hologrpahic photos, or 3d meetings/classes over the internet.
I think you are thinking too small (Score:4)
What we are really talking about here is changing every kind of property into intellectual property. Once this can be done at the molecular or atomic level, then you can make gold, heroin, a ferrari, or any other desirable item out of your garbage, mud, sewage, etc. It would render things like recycling completely obsolete. It would also render the ownership, buying and selling of material goods completely obsolete. Every electron, proton, and neutron would be worth the same amount because all would have the same utility.
I think you are also missing the biological implications. Today, when we want to fix a problem with your body, we have to first understand the problem, then coax your body into healing it with its immune system or with chemical help. But if we could just move your molecules around, we could just take a "snapshot" of you when you were a healthy 18 year old, and then, years later, rearrange your decrepit 85 year old body, except the brain, to the original configuration. This would be much more dramatic than cloning. You could duplicate or modify yourself with great flexibility, and would not have to wait for the product to "grow up" - while we don't understand certain mysteries of life, I bet a bunch of electrons, protons, and neutrons configured just like me would be, well, just like me. PEOPLE might ultimately be transformed into intellectual property.
There's also the military angle. Those who read Ender's Game may remember the "Molecular Detachment Device", which could undo molecular bonds. Just like you could turn a pile of garbage into a person or a tank, you could turn a tank or a person (or a country) into a pile of garbage. Perhaps the analogy is really Calvin & Hobbes's transmogrifyer. Of course, "they" could just turn their pile of garbage right back into a tank, and this time also turn YOU into extra missiles for them to use, so this would quickly spin completely out of control.
Of course, the ability to do this at the atomic level is very far from the fabbers we are talking about. I doubt it will come any time soon.
Sorry, Geeks. (Score:1)
The geek urge toward utopia will leave a world where the only thing materially valued is exactly what they don't have, much like an expensive private school social environment of today except global and total.
Picture it. It will be an all encompassing popularity contest.
Kind of sucks for the guys who end world hunger by self replicating nano devices, huh?
That's when encryption will boom! (Score:1)
And it's not only the assembly plants that are going to die, but also transportation companies - nobody will need them to move things anymore. The energy companies, on the other hand, are going to be VERY happy.
And about encryption again - do you think that businesses will allow you to get your own assembly plant in your home? Naaaaaaaaaa....
Scanners and Chewers and re=programable furniture (Score:1)
Three technologies that compliment fabbers are:
Scanners - the equivalent of MP3 rippers in the Napster analogy. These would be needed so that the source code for objects travels with that object. They exist in quite complex ways at present but don't model internal structure etc.
As people point out - this is only a matter of time (and matter
Chewers: Recyclers allowing materials to be used in the fabber. Clearly this will take some doing but I envisage a time when old stuff will be added to some new (high-margin) materials to create new objects.
Real-Time re-fabrication: This is the wackiest but imagine that your desk contains micro-circuity and a port so that it can be re-programmed into a dinner table, or coffee table, or chair.
Fancy a furniture virus anyone??
Also we need to plan for the role that Designers will be in - analogous to artists under P2P file-sharing
James
Forget P2P! Fabber = Von Neumann machine!!! (Score:2)
This means that to start with you have 1 fabber. Then 2. Then 4, then 8 then...
This capability would be useful in some situations, particularly if you are in space and next to an asteroid you wish to mine. Run the fabbers for 16-30 generations and then switch to making mining equipment.
In space when you are next to an asteroid you have a) fairly unlimited materials and b) unlimited power (solar 1.6kw/m^2).
That combination is very useful.
Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters. (Score:2)
not fly for fifty years...Ever since, I have distrusted myself and
avoided all predictions."
Wilbur Wright, U.S. aviation pioneer, 1908.
Re:Dope smoking and Slashdot posters. (Score:2)
As to the idea that this technology is lame, I kind of buy that right now. Still, all it takes is one killer app and... phooomb. Something comparable to what the web did to the internet may well happen here.
Also there's a lot of materials out there; you can bet that some combination of these materials are cost effective/useful.
The technology seems pregnant to me.
Re:Forget P2P! Fabber = Von Neumann machine!!! (Score:2)
Although the geometrically smaller fabber is useful until scaling laws start to bite; but the biggest problem is simply that it can only deal with a linear amount of energy and material, whereas Von Neumann machines can handle an infinite amount of both.
Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
"But if we could just move your molecules around, we could just take a "snapshot" of you when you were a healthy 18 year old, and then, years later, rearrange your decrepit 85 year old body, except the brain, to the original configuration."
Now that is a new definition of pain! Seriously though, great point about every kind of property changing into intellectual property in the presence of such technology.Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
We have this great display in our computer system lab... We won a ETA-10 Supercomputer in SuperQuest in 1989, but alas it doesn't work anymore, due to a leaky roof and a badly timed storm. Anyway, we have one of the disk drives sitting there, about 5 feet tall, 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep, labeled 'ETA-10 HD: 1.2 MB, $300,000, 1989' then on top a standard hard drive (albiet dead) labeled 'Maxtor HD: 9.8 GB, $230, 1999'.
I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but it was about there. So in ten years we increased memory storage by 7 orders of magnitude (given the same amount of money), give or take a few megabytes.
((300000/1.2)/(230/9800))= 10652174
log10(10652174) = 7
Now a friend tells me the ballpark estimate for the number of molecules of CHO (in general the components of life) in a human 15 feet^3 and 150lbs is 2.15x10^27. Conservatively, if each molecule takes up 1mb (including said error checking), then we'd need 2.15x10^27 mb of space. Starting with about 1mb in 1989 and our already estimated 7 times magnitude increase in 10 years, it'd take roughly (27/7)*10 = 38 years to reach this level, and it would cost only $300,000! I can easily imagine us being able to store the information needed to construct a human within my lifetime. The real problem would be how to get around the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle...measuring each of those zillions of molecules...you'd likely have to freeze the body to close to absolute zero to be able to measure it, but then you wouldn't be alive anymore so what's the point? The technology to measure this type of stuff would probably take longer to develop than the memory.
Flamers, note this won't be a hard drive or tape drive or anything we know of today probably...38 years ago we didn't dream of the hard drive, we were still using core memory. Imagine what's possible. Also, I'm not trolling that AC, just doing an exercise in imagination.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:2)
There is a subset of things that this might be useful for, though I don't know if there is enough of a demand to replicate the Napster model.
The little plastic pieces that always seem to get broken on laptops. The little piece in front of the CD drive has broken, I could send the laptop to DELL or download the design file and build my own. Or, the top of my travel mug has finally worn down to where it leaks continuously; buy a new mug ($19.99 at Starabucks) or build a new lid.
Nicknacks - "you should see the new Regis Filbin model that Sue-Ann Magruder has posted and how about Mary-Joe's 'Jesus-on-a-cross' it's soooo spiritual. I heard that FabberTech (tm) is now selling glow-in-the-dark plastic for their 234xl model. That would really be cool."
Hobbiests: build a custom guard for your paintball gun, build a custom body for your RC car, etc. etc...
I'm sure, given the bandwidth and access to the fabbers, people will find a use for them that we can't even think of now. You're right, it may be more expensive and less convienent than buying the mass-produced product, but that's was makes it a hobby, right?
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
Consider a common car engine with the higher and higher temperatures and pressures neede for fuel efficiency. There are many curved parts made to high tolerances. Never mind little details like gasoline and oil, and heat removal issues.
The short answer is that there are places where it can be used, but it is not ready for prime time at all under these conditions.
In this case, if the manufacturers could have saved money or improved performance via a plastic engine, they would have. Instead, the future is more in the direction of ceramics in this high performance field.
Heck, - would you want a plastic or a metal heat sink for your overclocked CPU?
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
I knew you were a liar right after that... no
;)
Re:Last time I checked (Score:1)
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Re:FREE NELSON MANDELA (Score:1)
Very much ahead of our time. (Score:5)
Fabricators are slow. Very slow.
There's a limited range of materials you can use in them - the idea of a Rolex fab mentioned in the article is a fairy tale. The fabricator can't just magically produce gold and diamonds and incorporate them into a shiny new replica Rolex Oyster. Fabricators just aren't designed for making luxury goods like this, or for making anything which requires a non-trivial variety of materials.
Basic economics tells you that fabricators aren't a threat to the manufacturing industry. Real manufacturers benefit hugely from economies of scale, allowing them to buy raw materials in bulk and use faster and more efficient machinery. By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens. The industrial revolution happened for a good reason!
Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items.
There are countless other reasons why fabricator technology isn't a threat to manufacturing industry. This presentation is just jumping on the peer to peer bandwagon, but it really isn't realistic. Only when we have Star Trek-esque replicator technology will this sort of thing approach viability, but I am sure that replicators will also prove to be financially unviable.
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Just wait until I fab that Proche... just wait! (Score:1)
Bwahahaha!
Fab After Dark: Let's put the 'X' in DXF [ridiculopathy.com]
Well, since Nazi is... (Score:1)
I mean, they're not socialist, and they're not Germans. A bit nationalist, maybe, but more isolationist than nationalist. And as for workers, well, ok. After all, they *are* in favor of lower taxes.
I will give you the "party" bit unconditionally.
When it comes to the big lie technique - a favorite of Adolf - your
Did you just call Republicans Nazis? (Score:1)
NSDAP? (Score:1)
Re:Well, since Nazi is... (Score:1)
Sounds like a good project to finance... (Score:1)
Re:I think you are thinking too small (Score:1)
no more drug control (Score:3)
If we as a society ever hope to deal with the drug problem, it's clear prohobition will have to go. We might as well start preparing people now for the responsibility of dealing with drugs rather than waiting for the mass flooding of the market that will occur with "the diamond age."
Fast 3-D Printers Using Cornstarch (Score:2)
I used to entertain the thought of buying one of these just to be able to design some cool sculpture and print it out.
Color 3-D is available. (Score:2)
I guess you can print out those action figures in color too! All you have to do is cough up about $60k dollars.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:2)
Re:Fly in the ointment (Score:2)
First of all, it was Heisenberg who worked out theory, not Planck. All Planck did was to suggest that maybe electrons could only give out specified amounts of energy.
Secondly, its not "what" and "where" something is, its momentum and position. And the Uncertainty Principle really only applies practically at the sub-atomic level.
Bad introduction... (Score:2)
He did this rather recklessly too, setting a tone for the whole article. I almost felt as I read this that the methods described for "Fabbing" products from files off the Net would be a bad thing (which of course, it's not in the slightest).
I'd consider reading that article with more care as well as who sees it. It's just the kind of tone that people who aren't convinced of the proper freedom of P2P distribution don't need (see, they know that what they're doing is wrong).
Just the facts please, and no attempts to excite or thrill us as to what you're writing about.
More realistic uses (Score:1)
The idea of downloading all sorts of items for your home is a little absured - at least for quite some time. As pointed out, fabbers have a very limited range of materials with which they can work, and take a long time to produce a model.
But a really interesting application could be ... electronics. openH.org [openh.org] has just been announced - surely fabber technology promises to be suited to their needs?
If a fabber could be made to use a combination of insulators, conductors and semi-conductors as input materials, you could download the design to print a circuit board or chip (much as we have been promised for years that semi-conductive ink is just around the corner, and we'll be able to print out our next PC on a Lexmark).
Using a fabber in this manner would be a 'lec hackers fantasy: design a chip, print it out, boot it and play around.
The economic implication of this are huge: if you could cheaply prototype electronic components at home, a whole new world of consumer micro-electronics would open up, with single developers competing against established corporations, in the same was as the Internet has levelled out the e-commerce market, and home audio recording on PCs is reaching professional quality (gee ... I've referenced TWO recent /. stories in one post - do I get a chocolate now?)
Not very convincing reasons (Score:5)
Computers used to be slow too.
"There's a limited range of materials you can use in them..."
Most consumer goods are made of a limited range of materials as well. Nearly all children's toys, for example, are plastic and/or wood. Besides, why couldn't I fab myself a VCR minus those parts that need to be "handmade" and then install those myself later?
"Fabricators just aren't designed for..."
Here's your basic flaw. No, fabbers aren't designed for that NOW. But what about 20/50/100/150 years from now?
"By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens."
This reads like FUD from the manufacturing industry, circa 2101. Sure, I might lose economies of scale (although dirt, air, water, wood and sunshine are all pretty cheap--not to mention the fact that I might buy my materials from a co-op or something)--but what do I GAIN? I can make a device that works EXACTLY how I design it. I can download Joe's design for a water heater, tweak some parameters and have my own custom machine that exactly meets my needs. The point of fabbers isn't saving money on pens. It's control over the devices in your life. It's also about opening the field of design (if not manufacturing) to everyone, just like the Internet opened up the fields of music, writing and programming.
"Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items."
This almost solely a function of the materials used--which could easily change in the future.
Honestly, your whole post reads like some intelligent-but-fuddy-duddy from the early 70's explaining why this new-fangled "desktop publishing" won't work. "Sure, a computer and a printer are useful for creating a manuscript--but who wants to read dot-matrix?"
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Cool (Score:1)
OR Stores would be able to make them on request, without keeping alot of stuff in stock
Re:no more drug control (Score:1)
Point missed. (Score:1)
"What does your product look like, Mr. Jones?"
"Well, it looks like this model here."
"But what if you changed
(fiddles around with CAD model for a second)
"Hold on, let it print out... There, is this better?"
These machines don't actually fabricate the object, they represent the 3D shape of it based on computer models. The process is roughly based on the concept that plastic/polymer/metal powder will stick to glue, and you can squirt glue on a 3D object using existing inkjet-type technology.
The conceptual jump from this to actually fabbing usable products (sports equipment, electronics, etc) is astronomical. All sorts of complications crop up, like having to use multiple materials and creating non-powder-stickable objects (like fabric, glass, etc). The quality would be really crappy for a while as well, maybe bankrupting any company that tries marketing it.
A more realistic concern [technologyreview.com] was discussed recently in the MIT Tech Review. It concerns the more feasable attempts at printing working digital circuitry. What if I can download the plans for a new SB Live or a GeForce2 and print out a fully-functional, if ungainly, piece of hardware that I could use in my computer?
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:1)
Your arguments DO sound like IBM, Data General, DEC etc. from the mainframe era. As thing are 'right now' you are correct. Given a few advances in material and technique, who knows what is possible?
imagine the 3d Spam (Score:1)
i would print out hard copy cd's (Score:2)
Re:Yummy wheat (Score:1)
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:1)
Moz.
fabbing (Score:2)
Limitations (Score:2)
Of course, there are reasons to use a fabber too.
Some of the advantages of fabricators over other means of generating solid objects are:
The advantages of using fabbers in design and production applications have been nothing short of dramatic. Manufacturers have typically realized time and cost savings of 50 to 80 per cent in product development, and even greater cost savings and schedule reductions are not uncommon. Along with reduced cost and development time, the practical ability to iterate designs leads to improved final product quality. Moreover, the ability to turn a new idea into a final product quickly can cause a stir of excitement and professional satisfaction in the product team. This in turn feeds back to high productivity and quality of performance from the individuals involved.
Very much ahead of our time - not really. (Score:2)