I spend the greater part of my time figuring out how particular
variants of software or various genres of business procedures will make a
difference to the way we live.
But here's the little secret: now and then, when all this becomes too
'intangible' I find enormous satisfaction with the world of atoms. I make stuff. I pound mixtures of flour, salt and water to
make sourdough baguettes. I play the fiddle. I convert one of the bathrooms into a film developing darkroom where I
extract fuzzy images from pinhole cameras.
(like this, for example. A pinhole photo of the Berkeley California marina.)
There's a very strong part of me that remains convinced that
*this* real world -- not the world of software algorithms -- is where most
people find their greatest pleasures. To
that end, I've been closely following the efforts to bring 'personal
fabrication' to 'the masses.' A while
back I wrote about the FAB book and since then, one of my regular online
searches has to do with efforts to commercialize these ideas.
One of the big drawbacks to FABs being as ubiquitous as,
say, Starbucks, is that the machinery to perform desktop manufacturing is
expensive and frustratingly delicate.
According to some researchers at Bath University,
maybe that's changing. (see
http://REPrap.org )
A recent Guardian article tells the story.
Put
your feet up, Santa, the Christmas machine has arrived
James Randerson, science correspondent
Saturday November 25, 2006
Guardian
It has
been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a
second industrial revolution and save the environment - and it might just put
Santa out of a job too.
The
"self-replicating rapid prototyper", or RepRap for short, is a
machine that literally prints 3D objects from a digital design. Its creators
hope that in the future it will be a must-have mod con for every home. Instead
of queueing for this year's equivalent of Buzz Lightyear, Robosapiens or TMX
Elmo, parents will simply download the sought-after design off the internet and
print it out.
BathUniversity"If
people can make anything for themselves what's the point in going to the
shops?" said Adrian Bowyer at Bath University who started the project. who started
the project.
The Santa
machine works like a printer, except that rather than shooting ink out of a
moving nozzle it squirts molten plastic in layers. These build up to make 3D
shapes. To date the machine has made a belt buckle, a scale architectural model
and even one of its own components. Dr Bowyer said that soon it would be able
to make items using other materials. "In principle it could make almost
any item that people want," he said.
So-called
rapid prototyping machines that manufacture objects from digital designs have
been around since the 1980s, although they still cost upwards of £20,000 and
mostly have specialised industrial applications.
The difference
with RepRap, which is the size of a fridge, is that the ideas behind it are not
owned by anyone. Dr Bowyer's vision is a machine that can be made, adapted and
improved by its users. "I did not want an individual, company or country
to make money from this," he said.
If Dr
Bowyer's vision is realised there could be profound implications for the global
economy. Instead of large companies manufacturing large numbers of consumer
goods and distributing them to shops, consumers would buy or share designs on the
internet, manufacturing items on their own replication machines.
"At
this time of year, toy companies lose thousands by not being able to get toys
to the market or having toys they can't sell... This way the product would
always be available and you would be able to reuse materials afterwards perhaps
in another product," said Professor David Wimpenny of De Montfort
University, Leicester. "It would revolutionise Christmas."
Michael
Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, an online repository of more than 100,000
e-books, predicts that if RepRap takes off, vested interests in industry will
fight the technology tooth and nail.
"In
30 years replicators are going to be able to make things out of all sorts of
stuff," he said. "Somewhere along this line the intellectual property
people are going to come in and say 'No we don't want you all printing out
Ferraris and we don't want you printing out pizzas'."
Guardian
Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
