3D printing

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description: layer-by-layer additive process used to make a three-dimensional object

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Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman  · 20 Nov 2012  · 307pp  · 92,165 words

aesthetic Computers that act like nature Printing wavy walls and custom gargoyles Chapter 11: Green, clean manufacturing A tale of two plastic toys Greener manufacturing 3D printing a more beautiful landfill Chapter 12: Ownership, safety, and new legal frontiers Printing weapons, drugs, and shoddy products Rip, mix, and burn physical things

Grey. Hot. A bicycle for our imagination The language of shapes Changing the shape of design tools Chapter 14: The next episode of 3D printing The three episodes of 3D printing Cofabrication of multiple materials Moving from printing passive parts to active systems The final episode—from analog to digital Machines making machines References

specialized fuel injector parts for military and commercial airplane manufacturers. To get into this particular network, his business had to demonstrate its manufacturing prowess by 3D printing sample airplane machine parts in a specified time frame. The manufacturing network stress-tested his sample parts and they performed well. After some negotiation on

in Boeing’s new premium airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, you’ve placed your life into the hands of at least thirty-two different 3D printed parts. The secret to 3D printing could be summed up as follows: 3D printers are more accurate and versatile than any other mode of production—be it a human

who would get a commission for printing my mechanic’s custom tires locally. Decoration aside, custom tires could harness the power of 3D printing to improve product quality. Each 3D printed tire could be designed using computer algorithms to afford the best traction tailored to the local climate. Owners of specific car models (or

be replaced by agile and independent small manufacturers able to respond quickly to fluctuating inventories and market demands. Less directly, perhaps the biggest contribution of 3D printing technologies to the economy will be to reduce the risk and friction associated with trying out new business models. Like ants with factories One future

platform, individual writers struggled to make their voices heard. Now, the collective communicative capacity of bloggers exceeds that of journalists working for large media companies. 3D printing technologies will make Makers, consumers, and small companies into ants with factories. Each individual manufacturing node will be autonomous, yet connected. Manufacturers will form and

a few times. These analogies are seductive because it’s difficult to concisely describe the sweeping social effects that will be wrought by 3D printing technologies. Consider the parallels. 3D printing technologies, like mainframe computers, got their start in industry. The first personal computing kits were primitive, low-cost and involved home assembly. The

the people who have embraced home-scale 3D printers. There’s another complicating factor that increases the allure of personal computing and industrial revolution metaphors: 3D printing is more than a single technology. It’s a broad platform technology that will drag along other technologies in its wake. Similarly transformative technologies like

of manufacturing is slimming overhead costs, keeping within the boundaries of environmental and workplace regulations, and efficiently moving physical goods from one place to another. 3D printing lowers the risk and cost of introducing novel products to the marketplace. Less investment upfront enables small manufacturers to make a few products at a

method, in particular, are in widespread use: stereolithography (SL) and laser sintering (LS). Stereolithography (SL) Stereolithography (SL) was one of the earliest commercial methods of 3D printing. Imagine a small vat of liquid polymer sitting inside a printer the size of an apartment-sized refrigerator. The printer sweeps a laser beam over

is that users are discouraged from experimenting with cheaper materials because they risk voiding their manufacturer’s warranty. The upside of proprietary materials is that 3D printing manufacturers are eager to invest in developing high-performance and profitable raw materials that will move the technology forward. Someday print materials will contain living

to be fabricated. Fast forward three decades, and STL files remain, yet their original benefit has become a limiting factor on the design possibilities for 3D printing. If 3D printing is going to fulfill its potential, the STL format, as valuable as it has been for decades, needs to be honorably retired. Design software

,” he joked. If capturing the design details of physical things becomes a quick and painless process, then everybody can become a designer. Once 3D printing becomes as ubiquitous as 3D printing, everyone can become a manufacturer. “My 11-year-old son will design a complex object that once took me 3 years to learn

thousands of humans worldwide. Phil Reeves, the managing director of Econolyst, a consulting company dedicated to the 3D printing industry, estimates that today there are “ten million 3D printed hearing aids in circulation worldwide.”4 Invisalign braces—3D printed, custom-made, clear disposable plastic braces that hide over a patient’s teeth to pull them into

models also help surgeons communicate surgical procedures to the patient’s families. Veterinarians practice an upcoming hip surgery for a dog using 3D printed surgical models of the dog’s bones. 3D printed surgical models and inanimate prosthetic body parts are just the beginning. Bioprinting will take personalized medicine to new heights. In the

may take years to encourage practicing surgeons, doctors and health insurance companies to accept bioprinting as a standard medical practice. Rapid advances in medical and 3D printing technologies will transform medicine. Today’s modern medicine would have looked miraculous if presented to someone living 100 years ago. Perhaps in 100 years bioprinting

design concepts pictured were real food printers or just skillfully rendered design concepts. Eventually, the confusion was sorted out and (much to the disappointment of 3D printing enthusiasts and technology-inclined foodies) food fans learned that the Cornucopia prototypes were not yet commercially available products. The intent of the Cornucopia design concept

Jason Bowman, University of Washington Brandon found his way to food printing while working on a research project in tissue engineering. His research involved applying 3D printing technologies to help victims of severe burns quickly re-grow destroyed bodily tissue. Brandon’s initial research goal had been to print biodegradable tissue scaffolding

traffic or lingering late at work. Processed food Printing custom food, even healthy and nutritionally optimized food, raises philosophical questions and stirs people’s emotions. 3D printed food is processed food. Like bioprinting, tissue engineering, and particle accelerators, food printing could be viewed as a direct assault on the natural world. Processed

made of a complicated blend of chemicals and other materials whose design and composition exceed the technologies we have currently available. The killer app for 3D printing 3D printing food will change the way we eat and how we manage our health. When digital cuisine is as widely accepted as personal computing is today

art and sculpture became too strong to resist. In 2008, Josh returned to art full-time to explore his passion for digital sculpture and 3D printing. Josh initially embraced 3D printing to fabricate the elaborate geometries he creates on the computer. “I used to create geometries on the computer that were too complex to

of her current collaborative research projects is called eSkin, which uses cellular data to inspire designs for responsive building materials. She and her team utilize 3D printing to explore and capture biological behavior in component-based generative models. We asked Jenny to help us understand the role of generative, biologically inspired design

of systems, or ecologies. In a sense, these systems are alive. They grow and co-evolve.” Printing wavy walls and custom gargoyles 3D printed structures already exist. Today, researchers are 3D printing cement homes using conventional design software and custom-made 3D printers. Like their small-size cousins, construction-scale 3D printers can form

to global proportions, there would be nothing green about it. Greener manufacturing The promise of cleaner manufacturing lies in fully exploiting the capabilities unique to 3D printed manufacturing. 3D printing technologies have the potential to disrupt mass manufacturing in the following ways. First, 3D printers can fabricate products whose shape is optimized for its

recyclable since it tends to lose its material properties if it’s reheated or reused. These findings indicate that despite the precision of the 3D printing process, not all 3D printing is a wasteless manufacturing process. The Atkins study discovered that the manufacturing process for printing printed plastic objects that had lots of large

hot and require coolants. Frequently, to pry plastic out of an injection mold, factories use toxic chemicals called “release agents.” In contrast to printing plastic, 3D printing metal enjoyed several advantages over traditional metal manufacturing techniques. The Atkins Study found that nearly 100 percent of leftover metal powder from a print job

, since 3D printers grew up on the factory floor, they have retained an appetite for the same raw materials used in mass manufacturing. 3D printing a more beautiful landfill Exotic 3D printing materials get a lot of media attention, for example chocolate or gels containing living cells. Other printing materials such as metal, ceramic

people and businesses quickly discovered that existing laws and regulations were woefully inadequate. Core legal definitions of ownership, location and format had to be redefined. 3D printing, like any industry that experiences rapid technological leaps forward, will also experience new legal challenges and novel forms of consumer safety and criminal activity. Law

mean new unregulated substances, or new recreational drugs. In the abstract of his breakthrough paper on this project, Lee Cronin describes its potential: “Three-dimensional (3D) printing has the potential to transform science and technology by creating bespoke, low-cost appliances that previously required dedicated facilities to make.”3 In other words

consumer markets, the infamous Napster case marked an inflection point, the formal declaration of war between music consumers and the entertainment industries. The world of 3D printing has not yet faced its own large-scale “Napster moment.” People speculate that big aggressive companies known for fiercely guarding their intellectual property—the toy

existing intellectual property laws when the culprits are career pirates or counterfeiters who maliciously and intentionally disrespect other people’s intellectual property rights. However, as 3D printing technology reaches the mainstream, simple “bad guys” will be the exception. Trademarks Once when I was in the Caribbean at an open air market,

cells. The ability to create arbitrary shapes is already having profound implications beyond engineering design. Mass manufacturing is becoming mass customization. In the future, as 3D printing technologies improve, everyone will gain the ability to design and make complex products. Barriers of resources and skill that are associated with traditional manufacturing will

is moving from printing passive single-material parts to printing active, multimaterial integrated systems. Printed battery A good example of an integrated system is a 3D printed battery. If you open a battery chemistry textbook, you’ll find dozens of recipes to make batteries—standard alkaline batteries, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries,

materials.” To distinguish these printers from their analog ancestors, we called these members of the new generation of machines “rapid assemblers.” The next revolution after 3D printing will be the transition from analog to digital materials. Hybrid analog-digital printing Imagine a future where human-made artifacts are composed of billions of

New Application Fields for Advanced Ceramics.” Ceramic Industry (2011): 15–16. 4 Grant Marchelli, Renuka Prabhakar, Duane Storti, and Mark Ganter, “The Guide to Glass 3D Printing: Developments, Methods, Diagnostics and Results.” Rapid Prototyping Journal, 17, no. 3 (2011): 187–194. Chapter 6 1 John Walker, “The Autodesk File: Bits of

Apple: The First 50 Years

by David Pogue  · 10 Mar 2026  · 686pp  · 216,944 words

some actual software, the modified iPods wouldn’t work. They didn’t have the right processor. Old iPhone models, however, did. So Lynch’s team 3D-printed Velcro straps and phone holders. They’d strap the iPhone to their arms, mounted sideways, mostly hidden under their sleeves. It ran special software that

We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 13 Apr 2026  · 225pp  · 76,418 words

to improve standards of living and where the future was heading. We examined ten technologies accelerating on exponential growth curves—computers, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality, biotechnology, and blockchain—that would soon give humanity the ability to meet the basic needs of every person on the planet

. But be prepared. This is a very long list. Creation Miracles Synthetic biology and genetic engineering create new forms of life or modify existing ones. 3D printing brings matter into being layer by layer, building something from nothing. Generative AI creates virtual worlds populated by self-directed agents that are capable of

wrote Abundance, disruption meant a shift from analog to digital—streaming movies via Netflix replaced renting DVDs from Blockbuster. Today, it cuts deeper. Technologies like 3D printing, AI, and advanced robotics are invading industries once considered untouchable. In healthcare, wearables track the body in real time, while generative AI accelerates drug discovery

. In logistics, robots, autonomous trucks, IoT networks have reinvented how goods move. And with 3D printing enabling local production, outsourcing—and the nightmare of tangled supply chains—is fading fast. Yet the biggest difference of the past decade is disruption’s

’s the short version: AI and robotics transformed agriculture through precision farming and lab-grown meat, and millions no longer go hungry as a result. 3D printing and modular construction cut build time and housing costs, so shelter needs can be met faster and cheaper than ever before. Solar and wind replaced

for PhDs, give or take the occasional hallucination. We see the same shift in the technologies of abundance. Agriculture has been transformed by precision farming, 3D printing decentralized manufacturing, and modular solar brought energy independence to many. Even healthcare, once a fortress of exclusivity, has been democratized—wearables offer diagnostics, AI chatbots

the combined force of exponential technologies. Industries run on solar and fusion; products and services are designed by artificial superintelligences; production is handled by robotics, 3D printing, and nanotechnology. Theoretically, this is a future that will transform every aspect of our lives, enabling humanity to take a much-needed vacation from survival

The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence

by Sebastian Mallaby;  · 30 Mar 2026  · 607pp  · 161,998 words

the potential of AI, and Zuckerberg expressed appropriate excitement. But then, as the dinner continued, Hassabis brought up other hot technologies: virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing. Zuckerberg sounded equally excited about all of them. “That told me what I needed to know,” Hassabis said later. “Facebook offered more money, but I

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free

by Cody Wilson  · 10 Oct 2016  · 246pp  · 70,404 words

the heartworms of history.” * * * The eminent science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Although 3D printing may seem like magic, it came from very practical beginnings. A man named Chuck Hull first demonstrated “solid imaging” in the lab in 1984. He

lucky to have been attending the University of Texas at Austin when we began the work that would lead to the 3D printed pistol. The university was at the forefront of developing 3D printing techniques in the 1980s, and in the years since I began the project, I’ve been regularly surprised by its

, what stood out to me most was his American optimism. He believed the technology was and would be a great boon to American enterprise. So, 3D printing has been around for a while. But the consumer at large mostly started hearing about it only in the last several years. Why? A New

the first successful line of retail 3D printers in 2011. If the success of our printed pistol was not your introduction to the idea of 3D printing, it was most likely Makerbot in 2012 and 2013 that caught your attention: the company’s rise and disgraceful fall have been almost totally responsible

for shaping the public’s perceptions and expectations of 3D printing. And here we are . . . I knew almost none of this when I began the work of Defense Distributed. People have asked me why we printed

’t in manufacturing, then. It was in publishing. In one moment it solidified for me: we could produce a gun with the most widely available 3D printing technology and then freely distribute the plans over the Internet. We’d share the designs as open-source software. Go for the brass ring of

with Ben. I had so quickly persuaded myself that besides American gun politics, ours would be a story of the history of the use of 3D printing. Running with an abstract and still undefined technology, we’d get to claim the highest ground of political realism. I fed Ben new lines on

metal entrails athwart the stained concrete, a young man crossed to receive me. Moving toward him, I began, “My name’s Cody. We emailed about 3D printing.” “Oh. Yeah! Hey, man, welcome to J&B. I’m Brent.” We shook hands. Despite his boyish face, Brent’s battered work clothes and height

me. I haven’t tried to hide any part of my project.” “Well, can you explain what you were doing?” “Have you guys heard of 3D printing?” No sign of recognition broke over my host’s face. “I am trying to determine if it’s possible to use one of these printers

’t fail to quickly find opinions. I traced every backlink and screed. Every pseudo-profundity about fires in crowded theaters and corporo-social responsibility. The 3D printing world intersected with a group of self-identified “Makers,” modern successors of the backpage DIY culture, who loaded online comment sections and forums with the

the words: “And say someone should kill you with your invention?” When it was posted, the piece itself drove the points home well enough. The 3D printing machines will be capable of reproducing themselves. No place in the federal budget for an ATF agent in every home. Kids printing guns while their

and laughed. Ah, but look at him now. “The bottom line is I like to help people and share my knowledge from my history with 3D printing.” He spoke directly off camera. “I was involved in the early days of 3D Systems when Carl Deckard would roll into the lab in his

seeing this moment because of the expiration of old patents. 3D Systems had been the first to market with the invention of stereolithography, or literally 3D printing. Like the abuse of laser patents in the early days, 3D practiced the ‘art’ of submarining patents by extending their claims back to the original

finally expire.” Erin was taking notes. “SLA and SLS?” she asked. “Stereolithography and selective laser sintering. Two of the basic forms of rapid protyping. Remember, 3D printing has been around for a long time to produce prototypes—nonfunctional solid parts. Now we’re in the era of making functional objects. So, those

blanked the lenses in his glasses and his mouth was agape. “What do you do?” My eyes traveled back to the moldering Teuton. “You know 3D printing?” “Mmm.” He blew smoke. “I’m the guy printing the gun.” He nodded, tapped his cigarette on a glass tray, and said something in German

search engine, fine, but for the public. We worked together through the night. He on the crowdfunding site, and I on the video. What does 3D printing mean? And can it be subversive? The little clip had become personal to me, more my ode to the technology than a sales pitch. More

I returned to New York and spent a few days at Hod Lipson’s invitation in Hell’s Kitchen before attending a conference called Inside 3D Printing. I met Andy Greenberg of Forbes at a little deli the evening before my talk and told him it was time for him to come

and the founder and director of Defense Distributed, a nonprofit organization that developed and published the world’s first open-source gun designs suitable for 3D printing. The design for his famous Liberator pistol has been featured in Domus architecture and design magazine, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the

The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small

by Steve Sammartino  · 25 Jun 2014  · 247pp  · 81,135 words

If you make, you retail (big and small) Border hopping and digital reinvention Experience > item Clues in coffee culture Chapter 10: Bigger than the internet: 3D printing A virtual physical reality The history of technology repeats The home factory Piracy on steroids Dad vs daughter Notes Chapter 11: Screen play: post–mass

certain technologies means that industrial methods of production may never eventuate in tomorrow’s non–BRIC countries’ developing economies. BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China 3D printing (discussed in detail in chapter 10) has the potential to circumvent manufacturing altogether. Exponential advances in solar, wind and other power-generating technologies may mean

same range of products and prices is available globally as long as we’re connected. And we’re entering the age of desktop manufacturing with 3D printing, where we’ll be able to customise things on demand and replicate ‘stuff’ from the physical world. More about this in chapter 10. Ownership is

the best price possible. So what happens when the stuff we want can be made on demand at home? It’s hard to believe, but 3D printing will make this an everyday reality. What is fragmenting Retail is no longer just the end of the supply chain; it’s something every business

sell. The power lies with those who have a direct connection with their buyers or audience. CHAPTER 10 Bigger than the internet: 3D printing I’ve been mildly obsessed with 3D printing since I first learned about it. Also referred to as ‘additive manufacturing’ or ‘digital fabrication’, it’s a process where a three

this is a bit like history repeating itself: making things happen with simple scanning and clicks of buttons on desks. The more important questions about 3D printing are, ‘What won’t they be able to do?’ and ‘How do we make money in a world where Star Trek style replicators actually exist

’ve been delivered even more than was promised. Given that we’ve lived through global network formation, we need to open our minds about what 3D printing will do. It’s changed everything in our physical, human-created world. It’s created a fragmentation of the production process to the point where

oft-cited example was Henry Ford’s assembly line, which to this day has led to better products at a lower cost, in perpetuity. With 3D printing still largely on the tech-hacker fringes in terms of actual usage, the level of innovation is astounding. This non-exhaustive list provides a perspective

it with open-source machines and software. In fact, there’s no way of knowing what someone has just created in their home as a 3D printing enthusiast. What’s important is what this list represents. At this early stage there’s a staggering scope of possibility for what can be made

. From reviewing this it’s not silly to believe 3D printing could make anything. The processes used so far in 3D printing are not nearly as important as the concept that we can make things from digital instructions. We can even make

make. It affects what everyone owns because they will own their own version of everything. It affects significantly how people and companies will make money. 3D printing manufacturers claim that anything that’s produced at a volume of fewer than 200 000 units will not be able to compete on price. If

the people. The accumulation of these ingredients leads to a rapid penetration of technology. We already believe. We just need to be informed of what 3D printing can do for us. All forms of retailer need to wise up and start selling them as a necessary household appliance, rather than a hobbyist

operating out of their home. Desktop publishing is about to be joined by desktop manufacturing. Smart entrepreneurs are already starting to build ‘bridge industries’ for 3D printing, which will teach and build the market in the pre–saturation phase of the coming years. Online 3D digital print shops such as Ponoko — which

serves them, which is something most legacy industries have struggled with. Piracy on steroids The real challenge for the brands that will be affected by 3D printing isn’t about whether or not this new economic construct can work, but rather whether they have the gumption to embrace it. The best example

affordable personal computer and the spark of the home computer revolution). It’s a pretty impressive party trick introducing someone to the basic idea of 3D printing, helping them work through their initial incredulity, showing them a little video about it, and then helping them print their first item. It’s a

fact. I asked her if she wanted me to print her something, maybe a toy or some jewellery. I could remember that some of the 3D-printing file-sharing sites, such as Cubify and Thingiverse, had files of really cools things for little kids. She replied simply, ‘Okay Daddy,’ and seemed reasonably

printer for manufacturing. I pressed the print button and it started printing. During the process of finding and choosing, I was pretty pumped. I was 3D printing my little girl some personal jewellery … on the spot … in my home office. Once the process was underway I said, ‘Look, look, it’s printing

get on with her four-year-old life. My father, on the other hand, had an entirely different experience. When I first informed him of 3D printing, it required a lot of explaining. I told him I’d purchased a 3D printer and he couldn’t quite grasp the fact I was

it he thought I was having a joke with him. To show him what it was I reached for my smartphone to upload a random 3D-printing YouTube video to do the explaining for me. He watched it, intrigued, and then again laughed it off as some kind of trick video. It

a great reminder of the best definition we have for technology, which is, ‘something that was invented after you were born’. We’ll all be 3D printing in our homes every day in 10 years’ time. The stark difference in perspective between these generations is everything. The really significant element is that

by the time my daughter is 14 years of age, she and every person she knows will have a 3D printer. We’ll all be 3D printing in our homes every day in 10 years’ time. And if you think that isn’t possible, let me remind you that every social media

you use today didn’t exist just 10 or so years ago, and we all know how much that changed our economic landscape. I believe 3D printing is going to have a bigger impact on society than the internet did. Yes, it’s part of the same ecosystem, but it raises even

has lethal potential, yet it lives in our kitchens. The real danger is people. How can we protect a manufacturing firm from the threat of 3D printing? We can’t. It can only be embraced as a way of making the old method redundant or less profitable for a company. Manufacturers need

(as they tour the globe) because their royalty streams have dried up. Human performances can’t be replaced — yet. Importantly, we need to think of 3D printing beyond widgets, tools and mechanical devices. We need to understand that a multi-material, one-process-to-print-everything is rapidly approaching. It’s quite

some of my internet startup ideas in 1995, when I first got on the web (I finally did it 10 years later). The era for 3D printing is now. It’s early days and there’s enough time for any company or entrepreneur to get involved. It’s the burgeoning period of

possibility. 3D printing is going to impact every business. Observing its development is not enough; it requires participation. The path for manufacturing is clearly leading to major disruption

advantage manufacturing has is the lessons it can learn from what’s already happened to the media and where it’s heading. What is fragmenting 3D printing is taking manufacturing from the factory to the desktop. What it means for business Desktop manufacturing has as much disruptive potential as the web did

for funding. In this mode of crowdfunding we see a real leaning towards high technology and high creativity. It seems anything with the words drones, 3D printing and smartwatch gets drowned in money; that is, the things that generally don’t exist yet and would not likely get funding via traditional channels

in demand from the new economic landscape, such as UX Consulting, app developers, big data scientists, community managers, cloud services specialists, online course teachers and 3D printing designers, as well as jobs that don’t exist yet. They’re niche roles for an increasingly fragmented world. The greatest fallacy in modern politics

, but a set of ingredients we can use to make our own recipe. And as far as radical technological ingredients go, we can expect that 3D printing will have as much impact on the products we use as the digital web does on the media we interact with. Bits are being turned

) Film about the global financial crisis. No Maps for These Territories (2000) Film presented by William Gibson. Something Ventured (2011) Film about venture capitalists. INDEX 3D printing access and accessibility see also barriers; communication; digital; social media — factors of production — knowledge adoption rates advertising see also marketing; mass media; promotion; television Airbnb

relationships — channels — tools community vs target competition and competitors component retail computers see also connecting and connection; internet; networks; smartphones; social media; software; technology era; 3D printing; web connecting and connection see also social media; social relationships — home/world — machines — people — things consumerism consumption silos content, delivery of coopetition corporations see also

gaming future — hack living standards see also life location see place, work making see also artisanal production; retail and retailers; 3D printing malleable marketplace manufacturing see also artisanal production; industrial era; making; product; 3D printing; tools — desktop marketing see also advertising; consumerism; 4Ps; mass media; promotion; retail and retailers — demographics, use in — industrial era

platforms pop culture power-generating technologies price see also costs privacy see also social media; social relationships product — unfinished production see also industrial era; product; 3D printing — mass projecteer Project October Sky promotion see also advertising; marketing; mass media; media quantified self Racovitsa, Vasilii remote controls RepRap 3D printer retail cold spot

Awesome Micro Project see Lego car project Super Bowl mentality target tastemakers technology see also computers; digital; open source; social media; smartphones; social relationships; software; 3D printing; work — deflation — era — free — revolution — speed — stack teenagers, marketing to television Tesla Motors thingernet thinking and technology times tools see also artisanal production; communication; computers

; digital; making; smartphones; social media; 3D printing — changing — old trust Twitter Uber unlearning usability gap user experience volumetric mindset wages — growth — low — minimum web see also connecting and connection; digital; internet; retail

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Mar 2014  · 565pp  · 151,129 words

of distributed and collaborative power, I would highly recommend reading Jeremy Rifkin’s new book. He clearly joins the dots on how the likes of 3D printing, crowdfunding, and online education platforms are all connected and describes the disruptions that lie just around the corner for most sectors.” —Rachel Botsman, author

Nature through a Capitalist Lens Part II The Near Zero Marginal Cost Society 5: Extreme Productivity, the Internet of Things, and Free Energy 6: 3D Printing: From Mass Production to Production by the Masses 7: MOOCs and a Zero Marginal Cost Education 8: The Last Worker Standing 9: The Ascent of

zero marginal cost in a collaborative networked world. And now the zero marginal cost revolution is beginning to affect other commercial sectors, including renewable energy, 3D printing in manufacturing, and online higher education. There are already millions of “prosumers”—consumers who have become their own producers— generating their own green electricity

again, at near zero marginal cost, is the next great task for a civilization transitioning from a capitalist market to a Collaborative Commons. Chapter Six 3D Printing From Mass Production to Production by the Masses The distributed, collaborative, and laterally scaled nature of the Internet of Things will fundamentally change the way

infrastructure. Hundreds of companies are now producing physical products the way software produces information in the form of video, audio, and text. It’s called 3D printing and it is the “manufacturing” model that accompanies an IoT economy. Software—often open source—directs molten plastic, molten metal, or other feedstocks inside

players learn from one another by making things together. The elimination of intellectual-property protection also significantly reduces the cost of printing products, giving the 3D printing enterprise an edge over traditional manufacturing enterprises, which must factor in the cost of myriad patents. The open-source production model has encouraged exponential

create a single customized product at virtually the same unit cost as it can producing 100,000 copies of the same item. Fifth, the 3D printing movement is deeply committed to sustainable production. Emphasis is on durability and recyclability and using nonpolluting materials. William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s vision

could afford advertising across national and global markets, greatly limiting the market reach of smaller manufacturing enterprises. In the Third Industrial Revolution, a small 3D printing operation anywhere in the world can advertise infofactured products on the growing number of global Internet marketing sites at nearly zero marginal cost. Etsy is

of green space, might slowly replace dense urban cores and suburban sprawl in a more distributed and collaborative economic era. Democratizing the Replicator The new 3D printing revolution is an example of “extreme productivity.” It is not fully here yet, but as it kicks in, it will eventually and inevitably reduce

Movement. The players collaborated with one another on the Internet, exchanging innovative ideas and learning from each other as they advanced the 3D printing process.8 Open-source 3D printing reached a new phase when Adrian Bowyer and a team at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom invented the RepRap, the

Zach “Hoken” Smith and Bre Pettis, created a website called Thingiverse—owned by MakerBot Industries—in 2008. The site is the meeting place for the 3D printing community. The website holds open-source, user-created digital design files licensed under both the General Public Licenses (GPL) and Creative Commons Licenses. (These

industrialized countries, but many, surprisingly enough, are in developing countries where access to the fabricating tools and equipment creates a beachhead for establishing a 3D printing community.11 In remote areas of the world, unconnected to the global supply chain, being able to fabricate even simple tools and objects can greatly

near zero marginal cost. Xerox’s silver ink process is still experimental, but it is indicative of the new infofacturing possibilities opened up by 3D printing.15 Making 3D printing a truly local, self-sufficient process requires that the feedstock used to create the filament is abundant and locally available. Staples, the office

from the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Khoshnevis is experimenting with a 3D printing process called “contour crafting” to print buildings. He has created a form-free composite-fiber concrete that can be extruded and that is strong enough

of designing architectural blueprints is high, construction materials are expensive, labor costs are steep, and the time necessary to erect the structures is lengthy, 3D printing is not affected by these factors. Three-dimensional printing can use the cheapest building materials on Earth—sand and rock, as well as virtually any

that 3D hobbyists are creating, if put together, make up the essential nodes of a do-it-yourself TIR infrastructure. The really revolutionary aspect of 3D printing, which will take it from a hobbyist subculture to a new economic paradigm, is the impending “Makers Infrastructure.” This development will spawn new business

instructions for printing objects are globally shared rather than privately held, yet the material feedstocks are locally available, making the technology universally applicable. While 3D printing promotes self-sufficient local communities, the products can be marketed on websites at nearly zero marginal cost and made accessible to a global user base

social entrepreneurs, and communitarians, all of whom favor a distributed, transparent, collaborative approach to economic and social life rather than a centralized and proprietary one. 3D printing brings these various sensibilities together. The social bond is the deep abhorrence of hierarchical power and the fierce commitment to peer-to-peer lateral power

a distributed, collaborative, laterally scaled TIR infrastructure. Germany is far ahead of the other major industrialized nations in advancing the IoT technology platform for 3D printing to plug into and play. As already mentioned, the country has surpassed the target of producing 20 percent of its electrical power with distributed renewable

of the efficiencies and productivity potential afforded by the new Internet of Things. This allows German infofacturers to leap ahead of the United States, where 3D printing firms find themselves adrift in an inefficient and outdated Second Industrial Revolution infrastructure whose productivity capacity has long since peaked. Germany’s small- and

outskirts, isolated towns, and rural locales—where infrastructure is scant, access to capital spotty, at best, and technical expertise, tools, and machinery virtually nonexistent—3D printing provides a desperately needed opportunity for building a TIR Makers infrastructure. Marcin Jakubowski, a graduate of Princeton University with a doctorate in fusion energy from

a “global village construction kit” to make its own TIR society. Thus far, Jakubowski’s open-source ecology network of farmers and engineers have used 3D printing to make prototypes of 8 of the 50 machines: “bulldozer, rototiller, ‘microtractor,’ backhoe, universal rotor, drill press, a multi-purpose ‘ironworker,’ . . . and a CNC

near zero. This was followed in quick succession by the plunging marginal cost of harvesting the sun and wind and other abundant renewable energies, the 3D printing of “things,” and online courses in higher education. The Internet of Things is the first general purpose technology platform in history that can potentially

it is. New communications technologies are turning the broadcast spectrum from a scarce resource to an abundant one, just as with information, renewable energy, 3D printing, and online college courses. The journey to an economy of abundance, however, is cluttered with roadblocks that could delay and even derail the collaborative era

of the airwaves. Because IT computing, wireless telecommunications, and Internet technology are increasingly being deployed to organize and manage information, green energy and electricity, 3D printing of infofactured products, online higher education, social media marketing, and plug-in clean transport and logistics, the networked Commons becomes the governing model that envelopes

bioinformatics has fundamentally altered the nature of biological research just as IT, computing, and Internet technology did in the fields of renewable-energy generation and 3D printing. According to research compiled by the National Human Genome Research Institute, gene-sequencing costs are plummeting at a rate that exceeds the exponential curves

a question of how, not if.”39 At present, computational technology is spreading to every other field, becoming the communication medium for organizing renewable energy, 3D printing, work, marketing, logistics, transport, health care, and online higher education. The new computing language for reorganizing society has brought together varied interests, including info

cost society. Like the democratizing of information on the Internet, the democratization of electricity on the Energy Internet, the democratization of manufacturing with open-source 3D printing, the democratization of higher education with MOOCs, and the democratization of exchange in the sharable economy, the potential democratization of health care on the

Few are suggesting that the quickening pace to near zero marginal cost that is beginning to impact the media, entertainment, and publishing industries; renewable energies; 3D printing of manufactured products; and open-source online higher education are any more than variations that can be fit comfortably within the existing economic paradigm. Even

financial gain. Breakthroughs in renewable energy have come from government and university laboratories as well as from private companies working the marketplace. Similarly, the 3D printing revolution is being spurred by both nonprofit Fab Labs and commercial developers. The point is that while the entrepreneurial spirit of the marketplace is helping

CNN, June 5, 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/05/business/etsy-leweb-craft-disrupting (accessed June 28, 2013). 6. “A Brief History of 3D Printing,” T. Rowe Price, December 2011, http://individual.troweprice .com/staticFiles/Retail/Shared/PDFs/3-D_Printing_Infographic_FINAL.pdf (accessed November 2, 2013). 7. “

11, 2013). 18. “Plastic, Fantastic! 3-D Printers Could Recycle Old Bottles,” Tech News Daily, January 18, 2012, http://www.technewsdaily.com/5446-filabot-3d-printing-material-recycled-plastic.html (accessed February 2, 2013); “Filabot Wee Kit Order Form,” Filabot: the Personal Filament Maker, http://www.filabot.com/collections/filabot-systems

Structures on the Moon,” Foster and Partners press release, January 31, 2013, http://www.fosterandpartners.com/news /foster-+-partners-works-with-european-space-agency-to-3d-print-structures-on-the-moon/ (accessed February 18, 2013). 24. Ibid.; “Building a Lunar Base with 3-D Printing,” European Space Agency, January 31, 2013,

Marcel Rosenbach and Thomas Schulz, “3-D Printing: Technology May Bring New Industrial Revolution,” Der Spiegel, January 4, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/3d -printing-technology-poised-for-new-industrial-revolution-a-874833.html (accessed August 5, 2013). 35. Goli Mohammadi, “Open Source Ecology: Interview with Founder Marcin Jakubowski,” Makezine

Laura Ungar, “Researchers Closing in on Printing 3-D Hearts,” USA Today, May 29, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/05/29/health-3d-printing-organ-transplant/2370079/ (accessed July 11, 2013). 72. Mikayla Callen, “Scientists Advance 3-D Printing toward Fabrication of Living Tissues and Functional Organs,” Objective

Standard, May 9, 2013, http://www.theobjectivestandard.com /blog/index.php/2013/05/scientists-advance-3d-printing-toward-fabrication-of-living-tissues -and-functional-organs/ (accessed July 11, 2013). 73. “The Text of President Bush’s Address Tuesday Night, after Terrorist

GPL), 94, 175–176 Germany and cooperatives, 213–216 flood in, 287 and Google, 201 and renewable energy, 82–83, 101, 141, 253, 257 and 3D printing, 101–102 Gershenfeld, Neil, 94 Gillespie, Tarleton, 203 Girsky, Stephen, 228–229 globalization versus reopening the global commons, 187–192 GM, teams up with RelayRides

and cyberterrorists, 291–292 and environmentalist(s), 170–172, 187–188 and the Free Culture Movement, 173–174 and the Makers Movement, 99–104 and 3D printing, 95 Hall, Andy, 87 Hansen, James, 287 Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (Layard), 277 Haque, Umair, 253 Hardin, Garrett, 155–159 Hazen, Paul,

to, 84–87 the last worker standing, 121–133 and marginal cost controversy, 135–138 MOOCs, 109–119 reluctance to come to grips with, 5 3D printing, 89–108 see also paradigm shift from market capitalism to Collaborative Commons network neutrality, 197–198, 203 The New Capitalist Manifesto (Haque), 253 Networked

212 thermodynamic efficiencies, 10–15, 70–73, 78, 91, 143–144, 186 the third Industrial Revolution. see Collaborative Commons The Third Industrial Revolution (Rifkin), 11 3D printing, 89–108 and automobiles, 98–99 and bioprinting body parts/organs, 246–247 and construction of buildings, 96–97 and customization, 91 democratizing the replicator

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/or Ruin Everything

by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith  · 16 Oct 2017  · 398pp  · 105,032 words

—temperature, moisture, electroactive, some other trigger to allow them to transform.” Professor Tibbits refers to this flavor of programmable matter as “4D printing” because you 3D print an object that changes through time depending on its materials and surroundings. For example, there’s the reconfigurable straw. The way it works is that

programmable matter world, a lone actor might download a program to make explosives or automatic weapons. That said, 3D printing has already made this sort of thing a concern. Attempts to ban, for instance, 3D printed guns have failed. This is mostly because it’s more or less impossible to stop someone from doing

holidays, and doesn’t question your taste. Giant 3D Printers You probably have at least one dorky cousin (or a brother, named Marty) who incessantly 3D prints tiny objects that are surprisingly intricate. Why not print a whole house? Well, it’s hard. Maybe not “printing a human organ” hard (as you

see in the chapter on bioprinting), but still hard. In fact, just creating the skeleton of a house is challenging. The most familiar version of 3D printing is a device that heats plastic until it is soft then pushes it through a nozzle, at which point it naturally cools and hardens. Then

any concrete. You have to use concrete (or a concretelike substance) that is amenable to the process of 3D printing. This means it has to come out soft, but still be stiff enough that another layer can be put on top of it soon after

the guy shows up from the city to inspect?” Modern inspection methods are designed for houses made in the standard step-by-step fashion. But 3D printing isn’t step-by-step—it’s layer by layer. To try to bridge this gap, Dr. Khoshnevis is working to create systems that would

idea: What if you just rapidly make a mold into which you could pour traditional concrete? That way you get the speed and customizability of 3D printing, but the strength and cheapness of old-fashioned materials. Here’s how it works: The 3D printer extrudes a light insulating foam that dries quickly

Dr. Keating and Dr. Oxman had some bigger goals for the second iteration. Dr. Keating made a truck that was self-driving and capable of 3D printing while moving, so it could keep moving the nozzle to make large structures. It is smart enough to adjust to fluctuations from wind, which is

come back home. Autonomously. Their approach blends the versatility of robotic arms with the power of large-scale 3D printing. And it’s on a truck. As a general method for doing things, 3D printing brings a lot of fringe benefits to construction; 3D printers could make complex structures that would be difficult or

means. This could mean cheaper, better-constructed houses, with more beautiful design elements (Gargoyles! Gargoyles for everyone!). For example, at least with some versions of 3D printing, you can vary the porosity of concrete, thus using less material and having structures that are heavy or light depending on need. You can also

are hard to make by traditional means. The ability to finely vary materials this way is something 3D printing does that is either difficult or impossible to do any other way. In the long term, if 3D printed housing works out, it may mean types of construction that haven’t yet been imagined. Swarm

Minibuilders avoid getting tied up into each other. We find these robots especially interesting because they combine the idea of the swarm construction bots with 3D printing. Also, one type of Minibuilder can use a vacuum to suck itself onto the side of a structure, climb up, and build more, which is

just awesome. But let’s face it—having a swarm of independent 3D printing robots building you an inexpensive work of art to live in is going to get boring after a while. How about flying quadcopter bots? Dr

the very simple pragmatic problems in a refugee crisis is how to house all these people and provide them with sanitation. Even with current, imperfect 3D printing methods, if the Contour Crafting technology could make houses with rudimentary plumbing rapidly and cheaply, they would save many lives while improving the day-to

to blast tons of building supplies into space, we can build your cabin out of local materials. Nota Bene on 3D Printed Food As we researched this chapter, we got really into the geeky 3D printing movement. We’ve mostly stuck to the clearly useful stuff, but listen—when life presents you with a

3D printed cornbread octopus, by God you’ve got to tell the world. In their book Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing, Dr. Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman suggest a perfected 3D food printer. Imagine a machine

while you put things together. And you need to not make any mistakes in the process! Some researchers think the answer is 3D printing. There are a lot of ways to 3D print, some of which we described in earlier chapters, but here’s the basic idea: By some means, you put down layer

’s cheaper and quicker to inject plastic into a chopstick-shaped mold than to build chopsticks up with layers. But there are some advantages to 3D printing. For a traditional mold, anytime you want a different shape of chopstick, you have to get an expensive new mold created. A 3D printer can

’re building up layer by layer, a funky pattern* takes about the same amount of time as a more conventional design. You can also use 3D printing to interlace different materials. If you’ve seen a simple desktop 3D printer, typically they only print in one color of plastic at a time

, and other inputs, which would be more or less impossible to do either by hand or using traditional manufacturing methods. The other cool thing about 3D printing is you can make unusual structures. For instance, suppose you want to create a ball with a honeycomb structure inside. This is impossible with an

injection mold, but is relatively easy with 3D printing. All these qualities make 3D printing a potentially great way to build extremely complex structures, like body parts. In principle, a 3D printer should be able to rapidly shoot

back into the patient. Such an organ would not have the rejection problems that normally come from organ transplants. You may have the impression that 3D printing is mostly for weirdos with too much money who spend their time obsessively printing Star Wars miniatures. But this is only about 97% of them

required to get your bio-ink ready for printing in most systems. To understand why, imagine you’re trying to make 3D printed cookies.* Even if you have a rig for 3D printing cookie glop, you can’t just grab some store-bought cookie dough and stick it in your 3D printer frosting gun

, and bio-inks may start to bleed. Perhaps literally. As if all of this wasn’t enough, a serious problem in the field is software. 3D printing started in the 1980s. The most common 3D file type is the STL file, which was originally only designed to deal with surfaces of 3D

, say, a laser) to form it into a solid object. When done in a very precise way, it can be used as a method of 3D printing. You “draw” a shape in the powder with a moving laser, then you add another powder layer and draw again. Like with the frosting-gun

. This is important when creating the complex structures Dr. Miller is pursuing. Plus, with the extrusion-based 3D printing methods, support for one layer comes from the layers below it. This makes it difficult to 3D print objects with hangy bits. Like, try to imagine printing a grandfather clock from the bottom up. The

. Guger, C., Müller-Putz, G., and Allison, B. Brain-Computer Interface Research: A State-of-the-Art Summary 4. New York: Springer, 2016. Hall, Loura. “3D Printing: Food in Space.” NASA. July 28, 2013. nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/home/feature_3d_food.html. Hall, Stephen S. “Daniel Nocera: Maverick Inventor of the

Gene Editing in Human Tripronuclear Zygotes.” Protein and Cell 6, no. 5 (2015):363–72. Lipson, Hod, and Kurman, Melba. Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing. Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley, 2013. Lockheed Martin. “Compact Fusion.” 2016. lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html. Lowther, William. Arms and the Man: Dr. Gerald Bull

the Science of Wishful Thinking. New York: Viking, 2008. Seiler, Friedrich, and Igra, Ozer. Hypervelocity Launchers. New York: Springer, 2016. Selectbio. “Caddie Wang’s Biography.” 3D-Printing in Life Sciences. Selectbio Sciences. 2015. selectbiosciences.com/conferences/biographies.aspx?speaker=1340332&conf=PRINT2015. Self-Assembly Lab. selfassemblylab.net/index.php. Sepramaniam, S., Tan

, 27, 65 European Union, 22n Everett, Daniel, 140n evolution, 196 extinction, 221–25 eyes, 186 Faber, Daniel, 53, 68, 69 Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing (Lipson and Kurman), 159 Fabric of Reality, The (Deutsch), 330 Facebook, 6n, 111, 180, 254 face-tracking software, 180 Falcon 9 rocket, 8n, 19 Faraday

Baby Project, 120n robotic construction, 134–63 benefits of, 156–59 concerns about, 153–56 and space travel, 158–59 swarm robots in, 149–53 3D printing for, 144–49 robots, 102, 129–32 autonomous, 113–16 as construction workers, 139–44 coordinating movement of many, 119–22 evolving of, 120–22

, 120, 149, 150–51 terrorism, 36, 38, 217 Tethers Unlimited, 63 tetracycline, 200 theft, 130 3D printers, 144–49, 151–52, 259 prosthetics and, 322 3D printing, 125, 152 of food, 159–63 of organs, see bioprinting software for, 267 3554 Amun, 53 Throw Trucks with Your Mind (game), 312 thyroid, 60

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

your curiosity instead of being stuck watching Gunsmoke around your family’s single TV set, as was common back in my generation. The maturation of 3D printing and eventually nanotechnology will exponentially accelerate this diversification of our choices in the coming decades. US Personal Income per Capita[142] Sources: Bureau of

can coat windows, producing useful electricity without blocking the view.[223] In the years ahead, nano-based technology will also reduce manufacturing costs by facilitating 3D printing of solar cells, which will make decentralized production possible so photovoltaics can be created when and where they are needed. And unlike the big,

decentralized technologies will define the 2020s and beyond in many areas, including energy production (solar cells), food production (vertical agriculture), and production of everyday objects (3D printing). For water purification, this approach can take several forms, ranging from building-size machines like the Janicki Omni Processor that purify water for an entire

, vertical agriculture represents turning food production essentially into an information technology. Lettuce growing in stacked layers in a vertical farm. Photo credit: Valcenteu, 2010. 3D Printing Will Revolutionize the Creation and Distribution of Physical Things For most of the twentieth century, manufacturing three-dimensional solid objects usually took two forms. Some

layers and building them up into a three-dimensional shape. These techniques have come to be known as additive manufacturing, three-dimensional printing, or 3D printing. The most common types of 3D printers work somewhat like an ink-jet printer.[262] A typical ink-jet passes back and forth over a

drug molecules built in to be gradually released into the body. Nanomaterials like graphene could be used to create lightweight bulletproof clothing and superfast electronics. 3D printing can also benefit from advances in artificial intelligence, such as software that can optimize an object’s strength, aerodynamic shape, or other properties, and

designs requiring shapes that would be impossible to manufacture with contemporary methods. New, intuitive software is making it easier for people to create 3D-printed parts without advanced training. As 3D printing has become more widespread, it has begun to revolutionize the manufacturing industry. One major advantage is that it enables inexpensive and fast

As a result, people with good ideas but relatively little money can bring their innovations to the marketplace and benefit society. Another key advantage of 3D printing is that it permits levels of customization that are not practical with mold-based manufacturing. Even a slight modification usually requires an entirely new mold

, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more. By contrast, even major changes to a 3D-printing design carry no additional cost. As a result, inventors can have exactly the right parts they need to innovate, and consumers can affordably access

One example among many is producing shoes made to the exact measurements of a customer’s feet for greatly enhanced fit and comfort. A leading 3D-printed footwear company is FitMyFoot, which lets customers use an app to take photos of their feet that are automatically converted into measurements for the printing

also increasing, high-volume manufacturing will become more practical.[272] In addition to manufacturing of everyday goods like shoes and tools, new research is applying 3D printing to biology. Scientists are currently testing techniques that will make possible the printing of human body tissues and, ultimately, whole organs.[273] The general

one person to another, which has profound limitations in terms of availability and incompatibility with a patient’s immune system.[275] One potential drawback of 3D printing is that it could be used to manufacture pirated designs. Why pay $200 for a pair of designer shoes if you can download the

and the smaller objects that go into a building will dramatically lower the construction costs of homes and offices. There are two main approaches to 3D printing a building. The first is to create parts or modules that are subsequently put together—much like how people buy furniture parts from IKEA

causes. This includes reducing factors such as waste and garbage, light and noise pollution, toxic dust, traffic disruption, and hazards to workers. In addition, 3D printing makes it easier to construct buildings out of materials that are readily and locally available instead of using resources that might be hundreds of miles

away, like timber and steel. In the future, 3D printing may be used to make skyscrapers easier and cheaper to build. One of the main challenges of high-rise construction is getting people and building

materials to the upper floors. A 3D-printing system, together with autonomous robots that can use building materials pumped up from ground level in liquid form, will make this process far easier

to operate. For example, while early shoemaking machines were hand-operated presses that required no formal education to operate, today companies like FitMyFoot use 3D printing to create custom footwear that fits each customer perfectly.[82] So instead of a large number of low-skill jobs, FitMyFoot’s production depends on

“Anthropogenic Transformation of the Biomes”; “Food and Agriculture Data,” FAOSTAT. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 260 For a closer look at the early history of 3D printing, see Drew Turney, “History of 3D Printing: It’s Older Than You Think,” Design and Make with Autodesk, August 31, 2021, https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/history-of

-3d-printing; Leo Gregurić, “History of 3D Printing: When Was 3D Printing Invented?,” All3DP, December 10, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20211227053912/https://all3dp.com/2/history-of-3d-printing-when-was-3d-printing-invented/. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 261 For more on the process of

3D printing itself, see “How Does 3D Printing Work? | The Deets,” Digital Trends, YouTube video, September 22, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

New 3D Printer Is 100X Faster Than What Was Possible: Video,” Inverse, January 26, 2019, https://www.inverse.com/article/52721-high-speed-3d-printing-mass-production; Mark Zastrow, “3D Printing Gets Bigger, Faster and Stronger,” Nature 578, no. 7793 (February 5, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00271-6; “Prediction

98 abstraction, 35–37 Abundance (Diamandis and Kotler), 112 academic tests, 52 accelerating returns. See law of accelerating returns Acemoğlu, Daron, 129 additive manufacturing. See 3D printing aeroponics, 180–81 Africa Ebola virus outbreak of 2014–2016, 272 electricity, 175 famine and GMOs, 284 poverty rate, 117, 141 After Life, 100–105

63 renewable energy, 172, 173 risks and perils, 278–85 superintelligent. See superintelligent AI symbolic computing, 14–19, 40 thought-to-text technology, 70–71 3D printing, 184 Turing test, 8–9, 12–13, 63–69 use of term, 13 vertical agriculture, 181–83 Asia, poverty, 138, 141 Asilomar Conference on Beneficial

249, 252, 261, 276 broken windows theory, 150 Bronze Age, 250 Brown University, 71 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 207–11, 211 bubonic plague, 271 Buddha, 267 buildings, 3D printing of, 170, 187–89 butadiyne, 251 Butler, Samuel, 75–76 C cable TV, 220–21 California, automation and jobs, 197 Calment, Jeanne, 255 Cambridge Declaration

and, 135–36, 189–94, 235–45 biosimulation, 189–94, 240–41 clinical trials. See clinical trials nanotechnology in, 192, 251, 257–63, 276–77 3D printing in, 184, 185, 186 memories, 38, 55 Merkle, Ralph, 247–48, 249, 251, 264, 393n messenger RNA, 272–73 vaccines, 237–38, 273 metabolism, 

, 55, 56–58, 57, 61, 62, 63, 164–69, 165–66, 181–82, 211–13, 293–312 prime numbers, 15, 399n printing, 3D. See 3D printing printing press, 113, 122–23, 124, 159–60, 253 prions, 192 prior probability, 120–21 problem input to neural net, 19–20 productivity, 202, 210

189–94 public perceptions vs. reality of, 111–21 renewable energy, 154, 155–59, 172–76 rising tide of, 194 spread of democracy, 159–63 3D printing, 183–89 vertical agriculture, 169, 171, 178, 179–83 Project Debater, 64 protein folding, 238–40, 284 protein synthesis, 261–62 protons, 7, 97 proton

189–94 public perceptions vs. reality of, 111–21 renewable energy, 154, 155–59, 172–76 rising tide of, 194 spread of democracy, 159–63 3D printing, 183–89 vertical agriculture, 169, 171, 178, 179–83 teen pregnancy, 118 Tegmark, Max, 330n television, 130–31, 132, 143, 220–21 teleworking, 124, 

Bottom” (Feynman), 246 third bridge to radical life extension, 135–36, 191–92, 348n Third Epoch. See epochs thought-to-text technology, 70–71 3D printing, 144, 178, 183–89 of buildings, 170, 187–89 medical implants, 184, 185, 186 miniaturization, 169 of solar cells, 173 thumbs, opposable, 8, 37, 245

Makers at Work: Folks Reinventing the World One Object or Idea at a Time

by Steven Osborn  · 17 Sep 2013  · 310pp  · 34,482 words

world are rapidly becoming more intelligent, more seamless, more connected. It’s hard to think of the maker movement without mentioning digital manufacturing technologies like 3D printing, CNC milling, and laser cutting. Although these technologies are not extremely recent—the first 3D printer was developed in 1984, the first laser cutter in

1965—the availability of 3D printing and other digital manufacturing methods are becoming more affordable, easier to use, and more accessible to designers, engineers, and hobbyists. The advances in these

a global community and share our experiences and designs with the rest of the world. 3D printing is being used in almost every job field imaginable, from culinary masterpieces 3D-printed in chocolate to 3D-printed prosthetics and custom-fitted transplants for medical patients, these tools are changing the way the world itself is prototyped

find something that you think you’ll be passionate about, that resonates with you. I mean, the maker culture is so big now. There’s 3D printing. There’s electronics. There’s all the subparts of electronics. There’s the craft side of it, the clothes making, and then of course combining

my understanding. Seidle: Awesome, I'll see if I can't get on that list! Osborn: A lot of people seem to be getting into 3D printing. I have a 3D printer and a CNC laser, for instance, and I’ve even seen pick-and-place machines in people’s garages. Have

me.” Those sorts of things are, I think, the creative spin that I’m really interested in. Osborn: So there’s the short-run manufacturing, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, these common themes throughout the maker community. Do you see any other interest groups or topics, maybe wearable computing or something

third industrial revolution.3 I really believe that that’s happening right now, where there is this idea that people are excited about things like 3D printing. People are excited about personal manufacturing. People are excited about Kickstarter. I used to feel like I worked on stuff that I was interested

in. You sort of had to be an engineer to understand. Now, my mom is sending me articles about 3D printing. It’s not just that it’s happening to industry. The world is taking notice. What I wrote in the blog post is that the

question, but to break it down: patent law hasn’t caught up with where technology is. You’ve got issues of marketplaces trying to regulate 3D printing and different marketplaces having different ideas and different rules, because no one has any idea of exactly what the standard should be. I don’t

the mechanical end, and I was determined to get it working. So I ended up building a machine myself. That was exciting. Osborn: So besides 3D printing, what are some things you are passionate about? Linder: My other passion was in the field of projected augmented reality. In that space, there were

printer. It’s trying to offer a new design, both in the product design sense and in the usability and the technology, making high-resolution 3D printing affordable and accessible for designers, engineers, and makers right on their desks. While that has been a promise, it’s yet to be fulfilled despite

some successful venture companies and lots of projects in that space that we now call the maker community. From Formlabs’ perspective, the promise of routine 3D printing that can help you realize projects in 3D form has yet to be fulfilled. What we’ve discovered is that on the price-point side

of other niches, more vertical areas, such as medical usage, and so on and so forth. To achieve that, we had to think about 3D printing from the point of view of 3D printing users. In a way, the Form 1 is the first 3D printer that has been designed by users of

is a stereolithography machine. Stereolithography is a thirty-year-old technology or so, and it’s been around. It’s is the gold standard of 3D printing in terms of quality. It’s basically a laser that draws layers a pool of liquid plastic, a photopolymer resin. Wherever the light hits the

s not coincidence. It’s design. Design is how it works. And the way it works is that it lowers the complexity that comes with 3D printing, because 3D printing is not as simple as printing, which you don’t even think about right now when you hit Print on your computer. Osborn: It

are mature products. So we’re trying to address that from a different perspective. We’re also trying to address the postprocessing part of the 3D printing process. So we provide this finishing kit and work through the process. We try to celebrate it. Many people were making molds before the day

of all these together is what makes Formlabs and the product, the Form 1 unique. Osborn: Can you tell me a little bit about the 3D printing landscape and some of the interesting things you’ve seen people doing with 3D printers? What are people using these for now? What are some

unusual examples of how people are using 3D printers? Linder: So people have been using 3D printing from the point they were available to do product design and rapid prototyping. That’s the key use case. You also see companies like Invisalign

that have a whole process of creating a dental solution based on 3D printing. You see companies like Nervous Systems6 that have jewelry lines. You see service bureaus like Shapeways making 3D printing available and different types of processes to basically print whatever. Then there’s the long tail

. A lot of people have little uses for 3D printing, but there’s this big bright future where people talk about 3D printing as a replacement for manufacturing. There are companies doing that as well, and those processes are still very expensive

, but they’re making commercial parts for airplanes with 3D printers. More and more car manufacturers are considering adding 3D printing to action-manufacturing processes. While I personally think that’s indeed going to happen in the future, I think we’re still quite far from

you have just machines, that are part of a manufacturing process. But at the other front, the home front or the personal front, I think 3D printing is going to potentially change how we consume things and how we design things for our own—customize them. The IP of an object is

people who don’t design web sites than people who do. So it’s really hard to say what would be the killer app of 3D printing—and I don’t pretend to know. People ask us this a lot. Honestly, we think the more interesting thing is taking the existing

You don’t need to explain to your boss why you’re buying a new Mac. It’s obvious—you just need it. But if 3D printing is $20,000 or $50,000 to get what you need, that’s going to be a bunch of work just to get it through

you think about it—many of the great hardware products that you are familiar with came about. Osborn: For somebody who is really interested in 3D printing and wants to get started maybe doing 3D design or CAD design, what do you recommend? How does somebody get started? What are some materials

to read or some program that you should check out? Do you have any pointers for somebody who’s interested in 3D design or 3D printing? Linder: There are tons of different resources online for people who do 3D design and there’s open-source software available. SketchUp is a

side, you can spend so much time just doing tutorials and whatnot online. But on the printer side, there’s lots and lots of 3D printing projects out there, and some of them are for the do-it-yourself type. People who just want to learn about the process of

3D printing. And if they just want to do that, then you can get a kit, an FDM7-type kit, for $300, and you build your

planning to launch it with a community web site and a bunch of tutorials. We plan to improve it and try to make 3D printing and the process of 3D printing accessible by providing resources to do that. That’s my personal hope for the Form 1. As for taking it to the next

Awesome. I’m excited to see you guys get this out the door. I’ve thought about the different 3D printing methods and I’m making some assumptions about the future of the 3D printing technology. I’d like to hear your opinion on some of my assumptions. It seems like the filament-extrusion

all have pros and cons. I agree on your analysis of the FDM. So just so you know, in full disclosure, I’m not a 3D printing process expert. It’s not my key contribution. I’m a product guy who cares about user experience. I’m a software system person who

to me. What exactly that process would be, it’s a little bit too early for us to say. But there are many options. Osborn: 3D printing is a really exciting space in general, it’s exciting to see so much great innovation and competition in this space. I’m excited about

an article today about that. Osborn: I was wondering what your thoughts are. Do so see things going in that direction? Do you think with 3D printing and technologies like it will become practical means for manufacture? Heck: This is going to be the same book as you interviewed the MakerBot guys

, right? Osborn: Yeah, but you guys don’t have to have the same opinion. Heck: I’m sure we don’t. I love 3D printing. I go to Maker Faires and a lot of the conventions. I guess for me that’s my vacations. I saw 3D printers years ago

specifically the pinball machines, which is both my hobby and job. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is a killer app for me.” 3D printing—physical things I can stick in a game and bash the hell out of—it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s slow, but you just do

in one shot using injection molding, versus using two hundred watts of power over three hours to print them using a 3D printer. Right now, 3D printing can’t really replace it. And, yeah, sometime in the future, maybe we can say, “I’d like some Earl Grey tea. Hot,” like

it just sort of prints them all out. That can be fun. Osborn: So let’s see. There’s the Internet of Things. There’s 3D printing. You do a lot of work with wearable technologies. Is there any other vertical or category that you think is interesting or you’ve seen

allow them to shine. Osborn: I think the most controversial 3D project was Defense Distributed. It is this really shoddy 3D printed weapon, but has got a lot of attention because 3D printing is an exciting topic right now. Pettis: I would say there are many things that are way more interesting. Have

work, specifically for kids. It opens the door for all sorts of other ways of thinking about how 3D printing can change any industry. Osborn: There are definitely some interesting medical use cases for 3D printing. I saw where they printed a woman’s entire lower jawbone. One thing you guys did recently

still at the beginning. We’ve got a lot of work to do to make people feel comfortable with 3D printing. Osborn: It seems like MakerBot has become the go-to printer for 3D printing. I read that Ford bought a MakerBot for all of their design engineers to have on their desks.

interested in talking to our president?” And we started talking about it and basically, they’re just really cool people. They’re just as big 3D-printing geeks as we are. Before the acquisition we had to work around a lot of patents in this space. That’s one thing I think

get the best solution. You get a solution. I’m super excited to have access to the Stratasys IP. Plus, these folks have been doing 3D printing for twenty-five years and there’s a lot we get to learn from them in terms of expertise in being able to just put

the pedal to the metal on what we’re doing. They have the same mission: We want to grow the worldwide adoption of 3D printing, so that more 3D printers can be out there. More people can be empowered to make the things that they need in life. Osborn:

to be creative without having to go deep into the CAD world. Osborn: Do you have any words of wisdom for people getting started in 3D printing? Pettis: I would kind of circle back to where I started and just say that it’s just an amazing time to be a creative

video game console atomic bomb, destructive technology Brittany Spears effect bullshit buying and modding buying, equipment design and manufacture pinball machines design circuit board systems 3D printing and technology expensive to make controller Geocities web site graphics artist MakerBot/3D scanner making independent films N64 Oculus Rift guy Palmer Lucky physical capability

system wireless sensor networks Linder, Natan Brooks, Rodney (chairman and CTO of iRobot) CNC machine 3D and CAD design design-for-manufacturing 3D printer projects 3D printing landscape 3D QR code entrepreneurship filament-deposition method flexible-display technology Fluid Interfaces Group Form 1 Google glasses Jerusalem Venture Partners Kickstarter experience microfluidics MIT

trade tricks transparent marketplace Pettis, Bre amazing model Arduino-based hardware Atmel microcontroller CEO and co founder (Makerbot.com) command-line tool 3D digitizing scanner 3D printing early experience Hackerbot labs MakerBot Digitizer MakerBot Replicator MakerBot Thing-O-Matic medical cases NYC Resistor professional-quality machine RepRap prototypes Robohand project Stratasys acquisition

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Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

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Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming

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Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

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Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration

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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

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The Kickstarter Handbook: Real-Life Success Stories of Artists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs

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The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

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B Is for Bauhaus, Y Is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World From a to Z

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The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

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The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era

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MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom

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Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside

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Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

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Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

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What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson  · 17 Sep 2024  · 588pp  · 160,825 words

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

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Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

by Juli Berwald  · 4 Apr 2022  · 495pp  · 114,451 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl  · 14 May 2018  · 463pp  · 105,197 words

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

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The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization

by Michael O’sullivan  · 28 May 2019  · 756pp  · 120,818 words

The Switch: How Solar, Storage and New Tech Means Cheap Power for All

by Chris Goodall  · 6 Jul 2016  · 271pp  · 79,367 words

Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition

by Imran Bashir  · 28 Mar 2018

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

by Tao Leigh. Goffe  · 14 Mar 2025  · 441pp  · 122,013 words

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

by Jason M. Barr  · 13 May 2024  · 292pp  · 107,998 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

Parkland: Birth of a Movement

by Dave Cullen  · 12 Feb 2019  · 368pp  · 108,222 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One

by Meghnad Desai  · 15 Feb 2015  · 270pp  · 73,485 words

Life as a Passenger: How Driverless Cars Will Change the World

by David Kerrigan  · 18 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 80,835 words

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century

by Ronald Bailey  · 20 Jul 2015  · 417pp  · 109,367 words

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein  · 11 Sep 2023

Aerotropolis

by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay  · 2 Jan 2009  · 603pp  · 182,781 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

by Ben Stewart  · 4 May 2015  · 347pp  · 94,701 words

Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage

by Douglas B. Laney  · 4 Sep 2017  · 374pp  · 94,508 words

The Rapture of the Nerds

by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross  · 3 Sep 2012  · 311pp  · 94,732 words

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary  · 14 Sep 2015  · 302pp  · 73,581 words

Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

by Garry Kasparov  · 1 May 2017  · 331pp  · 104,366 words

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe

by Denis MacShane  · 14 Jul 2017  · 308pp  · 99,298 words

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy

by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson  · 30 May 2016  · 324pp  · 89,875 words

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream

by Alissa Quart  · 14 Mar 2023  · 304pp  · 86,028 words

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

by Carl Zimmer  · 9 Mar 2021  · 392pp  · 109,945 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race

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The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard

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The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today

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Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World

by Anthony Sattin  · 25 May 2022  · 412pp  · 121,164 words

Long Game: How Long-Term Thinker Shorthb

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Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be

by Diane Coyle  · 11 Oct 2021  · 305pp  · 75,697 words

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland  · 6 May 2019  · 401pp  · 93,256 words

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

by Stuart Russell  · 7 Oct 2019  · 416pp  · 112,268 words

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway  · 15 Jun 2023  · 515pp  · 152,128 words

Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined--And Redefined--Nature

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Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality

by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook  · 28 Mar 2016  · 345pp  · 92,849 words

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

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The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce  · 20 Apr 2017  · 223pp  · 58,732 words

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire

by Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson  · 15 Jan 2019  · 502pp  · 128,126 words

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky  · 1 Oct 2018  · 425pp  · 112,220 words

The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg: A Fast Paced Portal Adventure

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The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future

by Tom Chivers  · 12 Jun 2019  · 289pp  · 92,714 words

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

by Bill Browder  · 11 Apr 2022  · 335pp  · 100,154 words

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

by Paul Kingsnorth  · 23 Sep 2025  · 388pp  · 110,920 words

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

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Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

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The Beekeeper of Aleppo: The Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club Pick

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Red Flags: Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy

by George Magnus  · 10 Sep 2018  · 371pp  · 98,534 words

Collaborative Society

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A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

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Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age

by Eric Berger  · 23 Sep 2024  · 375pp  · 113,230 words

The End of Nice: How to Be Human in a World Run by Robots (Kindle Single)

by Richard Newton  · 11 Apr 2015  · 94pp  · 26,453 words

Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy

by Dani Rodrik  · 8 Oct 2017  · 322pp  · 87,181 words

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

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Asteroid Mining 101: Wealth for the New Space Economy

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Platform Capitalism

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Demystifying Smart Cities

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4th Rock From the Sun: The Story of Mars

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The New Prophets of Capital

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The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

by Toby Ord  · 24 Mar 2020  · 513pp  · 152,381 words

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

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The Wealth Ladder: Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life

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