I wonder how long it will be before the governments restrict the use of
RP through registration and liscensing. The fact is, a terrorist can
reverse engineer the 50 or so parts of a gun and store them as data
files. Drop on Demand 3D printing in ceramics would give them the
ability to get this virtual weapon through security areas. The
footprint of the CAM is really the only limiting factor right now.
This is really not as far fetched as it seems. A week ago there was an
episode of Silk Stalkings where a criminal genius reverse engineered the
barrel of the police officers gun to commit a crime with her barrel
riflings in order to frame her. The criminal element will figure out
nefarious purpose for this powerful technology so when we have
discussions about RP coming to the masses, things such as this need to
be addressed.
Of course this also speaks to the breaking down of barriers in
manufacturing whereby a small operator can produce high quality
precision items without the massive tooling costs which acted as a
barrier to entry. How about a legitimate startup arms manufacturer
being able to produce quality guns on a small scale. The old economics,
whereby the millions in tooling costs necessitated national or
international marketing to recapture the startup and R&D costs, may no
longer apply.
I dont mean to just focus on this market, take automobiles as an
example. The tooling costs and R&D are the barriers to entry which make
it necessary to sell millions of units in order to compete effectively.
Now, with R&D conducted in the CAD environment, it may be that one could
compete in price against the larger manufacturers in the tens of
thousands of units. This changing of the economics of manufacturing has
a decentralizing effect and in my opinion and prognostication will lead
to changes in our society on par with the industrial revolution but in
reverse.
The next twenty years will see society go through a painful yet healthy
rebirth into smaller and more democratic principles. As large
governements and multinational corporations try to use the power and
wealth accumulated over the last fifty years to maintain and increase
their authority over society, socialization of technology will strip the
advantage of size away from them. So in my mind, the magic of RP is not
so much in what can be produced, but at what cost per unit and what
economies of scale are achievevable.
This is what will transform the social landscape of the west until the
next technology.
Steven Pollack
http://www.familyjeweler.com
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:47:38 EEST