Yay! Our first EOW video…and it’s about 3D printing. How is this an EOW idea? I’m struck when I read remarks about how younger people have less and less attachment to the physical objects related to music; CD’s and for an even older crowd, records. All their music is on an iPod or in the “data cloud.” I’m of the age where I still have an attachment to my CD’s….and I still have albums (no record player,though!), but I was glad to make the transition from records. But there are advantages to not being beholden to the physical objects, right? Maybe I don’t want to read all my books on a Kindle, but if I can carry — how many? hundreds? thousands? — books, all at the same weight, in the same physical space, a much, much smaller space than the actual books….there’s a lot to be said for that!
I thought about 3d printing when I needed a certain type of pliers the other night, a kind I didn’t have. Did I really need to buy those damn needlenose pliers to use once every few years? But if I had this device….I could ‘print’ one.
Indulge me a little here. Imagine that these things get cheaper, better, faster….but not to the point they could replace everything, obviously. But what if they could ‘print’, say, 40% of the basic physical objects of your home? That would be amazing! Let’s say you could ‘print’ a lot of your furniture (at least frames, say) in some sort of Frankenstein-meets-Ikea experiment gone mad! Today you want Danish Modern, tomorrow…who knows? Who cares? Your mood can set the decor. The term ‘bespoke’ which is now a fancy term for hand-made goods like suits may devolve to mean ‘not printed’.
Your EOW future may have you owning less and less…but having ‘access’ to everything.
The End of Work 
Another possibility here is that rather than washing dishes or utensils, you would simply grind them up… and then reconstitute them for the next meal. My wife would have a nice studio if we didn’t have so much to “store.” Crazy living! The nice thing about digital files is that they don’t take up much space…. though it is interesting that Google uses as much power as does 200,000 homes. And they don’t even manufacture anything “physical.”
Well, you would still need to own (or have easy access to) the printer. 😉 Plus, much more constraining, a supply of the various elements that are needed to make whatever you are trying to “print.”
Consider, for example, a new Kindle. To make the chips which let it run, and to make the batteries which power it, you need several elements which are not exactly readily available at the corner store. Tiny amounts, but critical to making the whole thing work at all.
You might manage to print a few percent of the things you use — those wth relatively uniform composition, like pliers. (And small enough to fit in the printer! Forget furniture.). But that’s actually fewer things than you might think.
While you are having less actual “stuff” you still need a stockpile of raw materials for the printer to use as input. At least until transmutation of elements becomes feasible on a massive scale.
wj, I’m not suggesting we manufacture Kindles at home! (not yet!) For right now, more prosaic things like chairs, knives, forks, things like that…. Furniture, in sections to be assembled? Why not, Ikea is a hit.
as for the raw materials…watch the video! Again, just because we can’t transmute elements(!) doesn’t mean we can’t have replacements.
As for the printer itself, yes, I’m assuming that the cost/size will come down….the way of technology, yes? We’re looking towards the feasible future, not the mere present.