...is getting closer.

Flexonics is still in its infancy, but the technology?s potential raises questions about what it will mean to be a consumer in an era of de-vices-on-demand. You?d no longer pay for a product, Canny says, you?d pay for plans. I look forward then to a generation of do-it-yourself industrial designers, tinkerers who tweak commercial product designs to improve and customize them. How will I access the fruits of their labor? Peer-to-peer plan networks, of course, where designs for blenders and mobile phones and TV remote controls are swapped like so many MP3s.

There was a lively couple of threads here on the ethical implications of this a few weeks ago.

Two comments:

(1) Music (and images and thoughts) that are digitalized can be stored on a relatively inexpensive media that has a long shelf life (access is another issue), so once it is made, the cost of producing an identical copy is cheap, and then using that copy to make other identical copies is also cheap.

Here is the sticky part. Right now, we distinguish between digital copying (computer memory) and analog copying (brain memory). What happens in 20 years when we are all permanently hardwired to computers that are at least as powerful as our organic brains, but have perfect digital memories.

Right now, I can hear a piece of music, and in my head, reproduce it fairly well. I can read "A World Out of Time" and tell someone about it. Neither is considered theft of intellectual property.

20 years from now, I can carry every piece of music ever published and every novel every written in my head - and copy them to any other individual that I wish to. The only difference between then and now, is that now it is external to us, later it will be internal.

What happens then?

(2) Manufacturing items by flexonics is different from reproducing music and movies in this respect. We need to build the device from real world components, not just rearrange electrons in a substrate. Even when we reach the point of having to provide only carbon, air and power to make 90% of the things we need, there are still costs associated with it (power and having the materials on hand). Granted they may be 1% of what they are now, but they will still exist.

In 1996, if the music companies had started sites where for $9.95 a month, you could download any music you wanted that they had the copyright to, piracy would be a lot less. Why? Well, first you would not have to hunt for it. Second, the question of quality would be less of a concern, and third, you would be reasonably certain of the content. (That Mahler Symphony would be Mahler, not someone on a Kazoo or a virus to wreck your hard drive).

They did not. They chose to fight and treat their customers as criminals. This does not justify one whit any of the piracy, but it shows that the companies had no clue as to what was coming.

Some (SONY most noteably) will probably survive, and eventually, adopt this pattern. Some will not.

Finally, here is something for everyone to consider. When nanotech and genetic engineering hit their stride, and people can remake themselves so they are immune to disease, can eat anything that has what they need, and are indifferent to weather - and each individual carries the sum total of all mankind knows, has the capacity to think about all of it and can instantly link to any other individual (or individuals. There are limits based on band width, but they are higher then what we have right now) what happens to property, property rights and the concept of society?

What we can discuss here, what we see coming is the leading wedge. The farside is, not incomprehensible, but unknowable in its details at this time.

What will the arguments be then?

This was discussed on Slashdot today, and the first post I saw was "What are they charging for the ink?" which I think will probably be the rub. There's no way a custom 3-d printed gadget will be anywhere close to the price of a mass-produced product that's stamped out by the thousands.

I think the price difference with conventional mass production techniques is likely to compare with inkjet vs. offset printing: thousands of dollars less for setup, but several times the per-item cost, and orders of magnitude lower production volume.

OTOH, if you only want one, like a rapid prototype or a novelty item, then it will probably be cheaper than hiring a machinist to fabricate it for you.

Though, 3D printing also makes conventional mass production cheaper, by allowing you to sinter together metal moulds for injection molding for less than the cost of a highly skilled metalworker.

And, if you're stuck on Antarctica or or Mars, the manufacturing cost would definitely be offset by the time and cost of shipping.

> There's no way a custom 3-d printed gadget will be anywhere close to the price of a mass-produced product that's stamped out by the thousands.

If it is within 4x, it's competitive. (Retailer markup is 2x and there are other costs in the channel.)

Note that price isn't the only important factor. Consider home gun making....

Plus you get customization. Just imagine the scope this will provide for bad taste.

Things will really get interesting when you can use a flexonic printer to create another flexonic printer. Then that opens the door to flexonic plans that do nifty things like build bigger printers, which in turn build big-ticket items like cars and even houses. Not to mention aircraft and even spacecraft.

Another big advantage, besides cost, is that you could gain access to all sorts of items that the powers that be think you'll hurt yourself with.

Of course you'll have to watch out for viruses and especially Trojan horses far more diligently than you do today. A malicious piece of software can erase your hard drive. A malicious flexonic plan can kill you in all sorts of interesting ways.

Uh-oh. I detect a science-fiction plot forming...

"Uh-oh. I detect a science-fiction plot forming..."

Coincidentally, I just read a short story using this concept: "Halo" by Charles Stross. It's in the Dozois "20th Best of the Year" anthology.

OLEDs. The display of the future.