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3D printing's future is the high street, not the home
IF YOU print it, they will come. Last summer, two surfers wanted to film themselves in the waves, so they headed over to The UPS Store. The guys asked the store to 3D-print a prototype of their idea – a gizmo that lets you hold a camera in your mouth. Now their MyGo Mouth Mount is sold at surf shops around the country.
At the time, that store in San Diego, California, was part of a pilot project, one of only six UPS stores in the US that offered 3D printing. Last week, the company announced that it had been a success and plans to put printers in 100 more US stores. It's an intriguing move for a company that is generally known for shipping packages. Daniel Remba, small business technology leader at UPS, says the firm hadn't considered 3D printing until a survey suggested that customers were clamouring for it.
"They told us that 3D printing was something they thought would be helpful for their businesses, but they didn't want to invest in printers or didn't have the capital to do it," Remba says. "We wanted to make all that stuff convenient."
UPS isn't the only big name adding 3D printing to its bag of tricks. Staples is testing printers out at stores in New York and Los Angeles, and Amazon now offers customised trinkets like toys and jewellery. 3D printing shops are popping up in London too. Even some public libraries have started putting machines in. Is printing about to make the leap from niche tool to popular hobby?
"It's reached a point where we're really starting to see its wide applicability of use," says Michael Chui at consulting firm McKinsey Global Institute, which last year identified 3D printing as a technology likely to transform society in the next 10 years.
But the industry has yet to come up with a compelling reason for people to buy their own 3D printers. It is usually cheaper and easier to purchase what you are looking for than it is to print it yourself. The machines can be difficult to use and if there isn't a template out there for the object you want, you might have to design it yourself, which is tricky for an untrained user.
"3D printing is only good to produce objects that are really one-offs," says Matt Ratto of the University of Toronto in Canada. "You don't want it to reproduce industrial goods. What you want it for is to produce things that are really custom."
Services like the one UPS offers may represent a happy medium. Those who know how printing works can quickly make the item they need, without having to invest time and effort in their own machine. Those who don't can talk to a professional, who will walk them through the design and printing process. It makes sense when you consider what the printers are most useful for: ideas like the MyGo Mouth Mount, what-ifs in search of a fast track to reality.
As 3D printers become more powerful and widely available, there will be greater demand for people who know how to use them, says Ryan Schmidt of design company Autodesk Research in Toronto. He envisages experts who can embed electronics, make unusual shapes or mix materials on demand. "Maybe there will be thousands of people whose job is just to talk to people and do custom design," he says.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Streets ahead"
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429892.600-3d-printings-future-is-the-high-street-not-the-home.html#.VC7ZKVcqPFw
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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