The Digital Divide.

So what is The Digital Divide? The name pretty much gives it away but ill explain it anyway…It refers to the gap that is between those who have access to modern technology (such as the internet, smart phones, television etc) and those who have restricted access, or none at all. It exists between the educated and the uneducated, rural and urban areas, between socioeconomic classes, and between nations who are more or less industrially developed.

The point of this post is to address whether or not 3D printing is influencing the digital divide… Well its not in my opinion, not at this stage anyway. Currently those who have access to 3D printers and the internet are benefiting from 3D printers and those who are detached from these technologies are not. They simply don’t have access to 3D printers without the internet or a healthy bank account.

Great Scott!

3D printing is only going to become much cheaper, faster, and higher in quality in the very near future and with easy to use software’s and processors becoming readily available for the public its only going to grow further.

We know all about how 3D printing is going to affect the future of medicine, crime, our safety and job professions etc. I’ve touched briefly on some of those subjects in previous posts and its all over the news and social media, but what about the future of space exploration?

NASA has been limited in the amount of time they can spend on missions because the shelf life of space food is not at all amazing, not even retaining its nutrition or palatability for a year. The printing of food is starting to become quite common and now NASA is exploring how they could utilise this new technology to help them perform deep space missions in the future. Being able to print food that complies with dietary and nutritional needs when they need it would be highly beneficial to the exploration of space. They would be able to go on missions for much longer periods of time! Super exciting stuff.

“Servings of apples from a pouch packaged recently and sterilised with pressure-assisted technology (left) and from one 2 years ago (right) show the older serving doesn’t pass muster.”

What’s the very next step for 3D printing though and how can it evolve further? Well the answer is 4D printing (pretty obvious hey,… 2D, 3D, 4D). 4D printing is where the printed products adapt and transform from one shape to another entirely on their own, without any wires or motors. The transportation of the device has been embedded directly into the materials themselves. The future of infrastructure would change dramatically because of this technology. For example, water pipes would be able to contract or expand on their own, meaning they could adapt to change in flow rate or capacity. 

As for what comes after that, I’ve got no idea… is 5D a thing that exists? 

I said that i wanted to try and upload something to the easy creator apps on shapeways and i had a go at it earlier, it legit took 5 minutes and it seems fairly cheap as well. Im going to do something a little more awesome than a leaf and maybe order it to see how it turns out.

This is the original image that i uploaded…

 

and here is what it turned into…

How will 3D printing affect you?

I think you would have noticed by now that 3D printing, or additive manufacturing if you want to get fancy, is unavoidable. Its in our lives now, we have to deal with it and roll with the punches as they say. The average Joe probably hasn’t thought about how its going to affect them in their home or their job, and more importantly how it affects their safety… well thats why I’m here, to pull that metaphorical rug right out from under your feet, perhaps to put a much fancier, nicer rug there. I guess It all depends on your point of view…

This technology is a positive thing for us Designers out there, its changing the rules of what’s capable and the opportunities for creativity and innovation are growing with it. Production of designs is becoming more efficient and designers and business owners can create test products multiple times before final production without wasting mass amounts of time or money. Because of 3D printing there will be faster design-to-product timelines in the industry and the rate at which designs turn into prototypes’ will start to shrink drastically. Like i said in previous posts, we want things fast and we want them now so this is definitely a positive thing for the industry.

Good news if you’re a Lawyer or legal professional, 3D printing is not just confined to the tech world. With 3D printing comes many issues such as breach of intellectual property rights and there will be an increased need for IP enforcement actions and lawsuits. It going to be so much easier for people to rip off other peoples designs and products and as a result the need for increased protection against infringement and breach of copy-write will rise.

3D printing has a mostly positive vibe going on in our society however there are definitely some negatives that need to be taken into account. The printing of weapons is a very real problem that comes with this emerging technology. A law student named Cody Wilson, who runs the organisation “Defence Distributed” successfully created the worlds very first 3D printed gun, it was made entirely out of plastic and fired a .380 caliber bullet… What the hell right? Not only did he create it, he posted the blueprint plans online for anyone to download. 100,000 of these plans were downloaded before the U.S State Department took them down.

Terrorism is such a threat to our society and with shootings commonplace in countries such as America (I’m sorry America but your right to bear arms is a load of bull), being able to easily print off a fully functioning gun is in no way ideal or beneficial to our society. These printers are only becoming more accessible to the general public and laws will need to be rethought asap. Because these guns are made of plastic they could get through airport security without being detected and for a terrorist, having a 3D printer would mean they would have unlimited access to a whole new catalogue of untraceable weapons.

Video

The video above shows the 3D printed gun in action and in it Cody Wilson shares some of his thoughts on why he doesn’t think its a bad thing to share these plans with the general public…

“I recognise the gun might be used to harm other people, its what it is, it’s a gun. I don’t think that’s a reason to not do it, a reason to not put it out there”

Really Cody? Really!?

I might just leave it at that now, because after watching that video I’m a tad annoyed.