There are three technologies in the world today that you must keep an eye on. Not because they are dangerous, but because the three, used in tandem, will completely up-end the current life equation here on Earth. Not to oversell it, or anything...
The first machine is one we've mentioned recently, Dean Kamen's water purifying device:
The second device is also a Dean Kamen project, a machine that turns heat energy into electricity, enough to power the first machine:
The third (and by far the cutest,) technology is the RepRap self-replicating rapid prototyper:
The RepRap project is extraordinary. An open-source (free) design, cheap to produce and capable of replicating itself like a Mogwai. Download the plans for one, make ten thousand.
These three technologies will allow pockets of humans to live free of all tethers. When everyone has access to free clean water and power, there will be no grids. When everyone has access to a mini-manufacturer, there will be no need to manufacture off site and ship goods.
Freedom and justice for all.
Obviously this will shake things up a bit. That's why as always, we're going to have to put our heads together, use our manners, and do what we humans do best: cause and solve problems.
As long as we work together, there's no technology that can divide us.
I was just marveling at the trailer for a new game coming out called Little Big Planet:
As you can see, a huge part of the game play is in designing the levels that you inhabit. This is especially cool because the processing power of the Playstation has gotten so fast that you can create and handle items with stunning real world physics behind their every move.
Create a log and push it over and it will behave like a log pushed over. Differently than, say, a board, or a log with a ball on top, or a sheet of glass.
So a game where you create and modify "real-acting" objects.
Couple that with CAD, the program that designers and engineers use to create 3D renderings.
So now you're playing a game where you create pieces and assemble them into more complex machines, gadgets, buildings, clothing, armor, whatever you like.
I play this cute little game for a while and I assemble a new kind of skateboard for myself.
Wow, a digital rendering of a skateboard! Big whoop, right?
Imagine that after assembling this 3D model, I hit "print."
Imagine that (either in my house or in a business nearby) my rapid prototyping printer hums to life and immediately begins printing a physical model of my skateboard, which I am then free to clean up, attach wheels to, and ride around my neighborhood, (with proper safety gear on of course.)
All I was doing was playing a game, and I inadvertently created a physical object.
That is a mind-boggling thing to be able to do, and yet you could do it this very day.
Imagine how easy it will be to train entire generations in the art of digital design and assembly?!
After all, they'd only be playing games!
It gets even better...
Imagine a complex, multi-player game where your team's mission was to finish puzzle pieces and slide them into a communal digital space, where more players would kludge them together to form larger, more complex objects.
You could build anything.
Need an entirely new type of helicopter? Program the game to treat the object the teams are creating as if it were in a wind tunnel. This would allow real-time flight testing of our helicopter as it is assembled.
Now, do the same for a nuclear reactor. Make the game about efficiently using heat energy. Most efficient design wins.
This is about the inevitable crowd-sourcing of design and invention. By playing simple games, we can all be aeronautical engineers, nuclear reactor designers, fashion magnates.
Right now we have data and call centers in India, working for pennies on the dollar answering phones and dealing with reservations. Imagine the untapped potential of those petabytes of human processing power. Right now that power is being squandered, but give every one of those people a copy of the Make Anything Game and let them go to work collectively on every design and engineering hurdle known to man.
Massive parallel crowd-sourced design.
Now, imagine China getting really into this. They make everything as it is, imagine if they designed it all as well.
What's really noodle-baking is that this brave new tech will be quaint in 15 years. Quaint! Like a slow ride on a gentle horse.
What will the world be like when everyone is playing the Make Anything Game?
You want to succeed in the brave new world? Play lots of games and get used to working with others.
Okay, think of a normal printer. It sits on a desk and puts ink onto paper... Not bad, kind of a single-use item.
Now, a 3-D printer lays down plastic instead of ink, in multiple layers, and the end result is a 3-D object. A shot glass, a rear-view mirror, a motorcycle helmet; any object you can conceive of can be yours.
The RepRap team are offering a D.I.Y. kit for making a 3-D printer (or Fabber, for fabricator) that, once assembled, can instantly begin making a copy of itself. You are then encouraged to give the copy away to someone that needs it.
You're asking: "Uh, but what about my patent rights? My DRM? My licensing fees?"
That time is over.
So, you go to RepRap.org, order the kit, make your fabber. Your fabber makes another fabber and you give it away. The recipient of your gift-fabber then makes another fabber and gives that away. Meanwhile, you've gone and made a third fabber and given it away, or you've held onto it and now are using both of your fabbers to refine and improve the design of the first fabber.
Your First Fabber has gone on to replicate an entire fabber family, and all who own fabbers are now free of the cycle of consume/throw out.
You see where this is going?
You will never have to buy anything again.
And yet anything your heart desires, anything that you could own that would improve the quality of your life will be available to you. All made of a non-toxic, biodegradable plastic.
I need a set of cutlery for a dinner party= I put some plastic into the fabber, turn it on, and in an hour or two, I have my cutlery.
The frame of my glasses broke!= My optometrist emails the specs and my fabber prints out the new frame.
I need elbow pads= Print 'em. Strap 'em on.
I am in a remote location and desperately need a syringe bulb to get a bug out of my ear!: Print one out, and squirt the little critter out of there!
I am in Africa and would like to build a wind turbine to produce power for my village= Fabber prints the parts, you assemble them. Everyone gets light to read by, energy to cook with, chill food with, and filter water with.
The possibilities are endless.
Anything you can conceive of, you can have. Nearly free. The only costs are the plastic and the power to run the fabber.
The above picture may not look like much, but the home fabber represents an enormous shift in human socio-culture.
It is the difference between being a consumer, and being a producer.
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