3D Printing and How it will Change Users’ Lives

The free market pushes out obsolete businesses. Fact.

Borders, a large company selling books, music, and movies, just announced they are closing their doors. How does a company with locations worldwide go under when they are selling products that everyone wants? When their competition does it better. The only way to do it better is to adapt to the user. Today’s user wants media instantly on every device. BitTorrent, iTunes, Amazon, and many others kept up with the future of music while Borders kept selling CDs for over-the-top prices. In movies and books, the same thing happened. This is what I can only call the first phase of custom personal data.

First Phase of Custom Personal Data: Media

Music you like can be remixed on your computer, altered to your needs. Who hasn’t heard a techno mash-up of a song you strongly dislike, yet this remix made it onto your hard drive?

The growing trend is the user determining what data they use daily. When you think back into television’s past, the viewer wasn’t really determining what shows were being made. They just determined what shows, out of the ones already running, would stay on the air. Television shows like NBC’s Community would have been off the air quickly. But, when you look at who’s getting views online, it is niche shows like Community. Past that, YouTube series like We Need Girlfriends are being picked up by studios thanks to viewers already green-lighting the project before the studio did, just by liking it.

Why is this? The internet has opened a direct line from the creator of content to the user. If you hate something about a game like the hit internet sensation Minecraft, the creator wants you to tell him how to do it better. Better yet, you can build a mod that they may integrate into a vanilla installation of the game.

So this is what is happening now. But how about in a decade from now?

Second Phase of Custom Personal Data: Solid Objects

3D printers are going to be big in the next few years. Already, services like printing Spore creations or Minecraft structures have been created and are slowly carving a new industry. They are not mass producing a statue, they are custom printing something for a specific person. This is the second phase of custom personal data and it is only the beginning.

Small objects like bolts, phone docks, hooks or unique pieces of molding that have cracked will make life much easier. That one-of-a-kind screw you need to fix that old computer will soon be in reach with just a click of the print button… Along with the right screwdriver head to use it.

While not feasible economically yet (3D Printers are expensive and still not perfected for home use) the next era is approaching. Manufacturers better get ready as the next industry the piracy crowd is going to take down is schematics for objects. Why buy screwdrivers if I can just download a schematic that has been refined by user after user and make it the color I want for a competitive price?

The death of the furniture store might be coming within the next 30-50 years and it will remind you a lot of the slow death of the music industry happening now. An IKEA bookshelf could cost me upwards of $100. What if someone leaked the schematic? I can take that file (or even a copycat file that will likely begin to start popping up) and alter it to fit the space I have in my home. While a whole bookshelf will not be something happening near the beginning of this phase, eventually it will be a reality.

I am a picky person about the objects I use daily. Things like tables, moldings, and door handles can make me cringe if done wrong. I’d like to begin building my own objects. And what if I could charge people to use these schematics? Just as people pay for apps, this will be the next market for budding companies. It will be as profitable as mass-production and as personal as buying one-of-a-kind art. Did I mention equally as cheap for the consumer?

Third Phase of Custom Personal Data: Complex Machinery

Now remember the second phase is going to take a while. Decades, if not longer. But the third phase will come in the form of the user being in control of literally every item in the home.

If you want a new processor for your computer, you will be able to download a plan from a company and using that to print a processor. Break your Television screen? print up a new screen. Your car might need a new engine, why not create it yourself? Complex pieces of engineering will be available on request as long as the materials are there. And if not in your own home, there will be local, small businesses that do this sort of thing similar to small banner printers.

I may be wrong about this phase, but if I am, something far greater that at this point in time cannot be fathomed will be in place of it. The future sure is exciting.

Top photo by brum d, used under the Creative Commons License.