The effects of 3D printing on the ability to maintain prohibitions

Living in the future is complicated.

I think what will happen is that the ambit of criminality will be extended to include designs that produce banned objects. So the uploader would be criminalized for transmitting criminal instructions, and the downloaders would be criminalized for accessing and possessing criminal instructions.

In some ways this parallels legal prohibitions on child pornography. One person can upload an illegal image, and any number of other people can download that image for themselves. In fact, digital child pornography is really just a different set of instructions - one which tells your computer how to display an illegal image.

Charles Stross wrote about this very topic.

A future dorm room must have: Plastic Cutlery Printer!
Instead of throwing away or washing your old forks and spoons, feed them right back into the printer and you'll have fresh ones in the morning!

Patent. That. Now.

Or I'm stealing that and becoming a zillionaire.

Lol. College students man. They'd just pirate that shit.

this is true

there are no sentient fungi on this message board

carry on with your thread, people

What jibble said. Plates, spoons, all of it. I would buy and plant one of those in my dorm IMMEDIATELY.

I think a lot of the poo pooing going on in this thread about home use of 3D printers is silly. Of course they serve no real role at the moment. Neither did the first computers.

And then there's another bit about how industrial firms will have better printers with better materials. Yes. They also have better computers with fancy ERPs and spendy software. Does that make your computer useless?

Think about it another way. This is a device that allows same instant delivery of basic consumer goods. Someone can list a design for a product on Amazon for a few bucks -- cups, plates, part for your water heater, fancy pillow, dildo -- and you can buy it, print it out and start using it within hours or even minutes. Condoms on demand!

Imagine how much more awesome it'll be as an artist to just put your design on etsy and then have users front the cost of the materials.

Could it be used to make criminal shit? Sure. And my dick could be used for rape. My computer could be used for theft. My chemistry kit could be used for bombs. Simply because an object or device or body part can be used in a particular (and criminal) way does not mean it will be used in that way by all, many, most or even some users. The solution isn't to ban something because it can be scary. It's to find ways to make people prefer a life of honest burghering rather than criminality. Possibly by making jobs easy to find, education easy to get and mental care free.

I like how people are talking about games workshop. Their miniatures are at least complex. I'd guess LEGO will get hit before GW does. Some of the larger kits cost almost as much as a makerbot, don't they?

Meth is a bad analogy, unless like someone said they start banning the "ink". They can ban plan trading like they "ban" mp3s now, and I'm guessing it'll be about as effective.

I just want to use it to make a really nice costume of a Bubblegum Crisis hardsuit without having to physically mold stuff.

I don't think Lego is really under any threat from 3D printers at current. The pieces are produced with insanely small tolerances to all fit together properly. Games Workship, they have a little more worry. If two Ultramarines aren't exactly right, nobody's likely to notice or care, especially post paint. It's form, not function, which is the big advantage of buying a professional product.

Could 3D printers give us the delicious, homecooked meals of tomorrow?!

I really hope the burrito extrusion device works out well. That and the pizza machine really could fuel America's dorms.

I am outsourcing my very valuable and influential opinion on this subject to LK until further notice! Which is of course my way of saying hurrrrrr he sounds smart on this one!

reported

Man, screw 3D printers. They destroy the plausibility of interstellar tramp freighters. "Mayday! Mayday! This is Free Trader Beowulf! We have no economic reason to exist."

I thought that was a post from the future.

It is. Ya think Lum wants any o' that time-travelling bullshit on this forum? I can tell you right now that when he saw that report the day after Christmas, he decidedly did NOT.

Nah, man. You'll always need to haul volatiles and raw materials. There's a reason there are so many hard SF books about pushing ice. Makers have to make something out of something else, even living in a post scarcity world, we'd still need deliveries of raw materials. Eclipse Phase actually spends a ton of time and ink on this subject, thinking about the kind of world and society that free and unrestricted access to fabrication technology could enable. It's one of the reasons it's my favorite RPG around.

One of their sales points is making prototypes of something that would later go into general production, probably on a more standard (mass production) manufacturing line. That's probably a pretty decent market. My dad (engineer who is now retired/consultant) would love one.

Interplanetary is one thing, interstellar is another. If more systems with planets in habitable zones turn out to be like ours, with rocky planets and moons and gas giants, as well as Trojans, Greeks and Hildas, you're going to have to eat up a lot of raw materials for your Dyson sphere before you need anything from another star system.

I've been thinking of picking up Eclipse Phase.

If there's a gas giant somewhere with abnormally high He3, it'd possibly be worth it to ship a planetoid full of it to a neighboring star.

Good point. At least until you have an atomic-level 3D printer to make the molecules you want. And I've always had an idea (though I'm no scientist) that you could probably build collectors close in to a star to get He3, and potentially power anti-matter generators. 'Course, they'd need to be big.

Well, good point. Also, if you're conversant with the difference between interplanetary and interstellar, if you know what a Dyson Sphere is, you should already have Eclipse Phase. They just put Rimward up for sale, focusing on the colonies and societies in the outer rim of the solar system, particularly the Trojans and Greeks, but going all the way out to the Oort Cloud.

How did we get so nerdy in here, maintain the topic and yet go wildly away from it at the same time so fucking fast?

How? This is debate and discussion, son.