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[Flying Dice]

It's at times like these when I remember even on this forum we had people saying 3D printing would never catch on

Personally I never said it wouldn't catch on, I did say that people have been severely overestimating the impact it's going to have on the way the world works.

The home sewing machine didn't invalidate the clothes factory. It just made it easier for hobbyists to make their own clothes.

That's not quite a perfect comparison. One of the biggest benefits of 3D printing is that, as an additive process, there is virtually no waste or scrap material. That's a shift in process rather than in scale; there is no current "factory line" equivalent save for parts and candy manufacturers, and those are generally limited to what can be done with molds. The sewing machine analogy would more closely resemble the difference between a carpenter and a furniture factory; both operate by starting with large blocks of material and cutting them to fit the necessary sizes, whereas a 3D printed piece of furniture could be assembled all in one piece from a supply of raw material.

It's not paradigm-shifting, but it is potentially much more resource-efficient. There are also the aspects of it relating to the production of medicine and food which could be much more important than saving bits and pieces.

[MagmaMcFry]

There are also the aspects of it relating to the production of medicine and food which could be much more important than saving bits and pieces.

Er, why do food and medicine need to have special shapes to be useful?

[Nadaka]

Yea... that seems odd. You get the same benefit by snacking on a roll of plasticized food like product as you do by snacking on the same stuff shaped like a sandwich.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yes, but people won't eat that. They have to psychologically accept that the item presented to them is in fact edible.

[MaximumZero]

Yes, but people won't eat that. They have to psychologically accept that the item presented to them is in fact edible.

Au contraire, I give you Fruit By The Foot.

[Flying Dice]

There are also the aspects of it relating to the production of medicine and food which could be much more important than saving bits and pieces.

Er, why do food and medicine need to have special shapes to be useful?

It's not the shape. It's that (particularly with food) you can precisely control what goes into it, which leaves open the possibility of extremely nutrient-rich foods. Also, apologies. I was using "medicine" to refer to the field of medical science. 3D printers are already in use for tissue printing, and can potentially be used to print organs, stem cells, blood vessels, skin, and so forth. In the U.S. the printing of human cells and tissues has been legalized, though organ printing has not. But essentially this could mean the end of reliance on the donor system for organ and tissue repair and replacement, while also sidestepping the (idiotic) "ethical" debate over cloning parts of the human body and the use of stem cells for the same.

[Pnx]

A lot of the reactions, where people felt that 3D printing would render factories obsolete, remind me of the kind of reactions we saw people have to a lot of older technologies when they were still new.

Some people thought when plastic first started to become popular that it would begin to replace all other materials, we'd be living in plastic houses, sitting on plastic furniture, wearing plastics for clothes, we sort of do a lot of this stuff, but it was nowhere near as paradigm shifting as a lot of people thought.

Flying cars/jetpacks are also a good example, when we were experimenting with jet engines which were far more efficient at enabling flight, people began to think that flight would become a household thing. And it definitely had an impact, we can cross from one side of the world to the other in less than 24 hours, we can make what once would have been a six month journey in less than 24 hours now. But again, the impacts were not quite as dramatic as some people thought.

[Flying Dice]

That's the thing:

It's not paradigm-shifting

Something doesn't has to be absolutely revolutionary to be worthwhile. Human civilization is built on the incremental addition of new ideas and technologies.

[Pnx]

I'm honestly not sure what we're even arguing about right now, we seem to agree completely... I guess I'm just bitching?

[Flying Dice]

I'm not sure myself. Probably a couple misinterpretations somewhere back down the line. At least it wasn't a political argument, as we're departing without hurt feelings and with all of our limbs.

[Sirus]

True that. It'd suck if the Happy thread got locked from a debate gone horribly wrong :/

[Scelly9]

I'm not sure myself. Probably a couple misinterpretations somewhere back down the line. At least it wasn't a political argument, as we're departing without hurt feelings and with all of our limbs.

All your limbs? I doubt it, I instructed my printerbot army to acquire some... biological material.

[kaijyuu]

And I, being a happiness vampire, am right at this moment sucking out all your good feelings!

Hurt feelings and lost limbs all around!

[Flying Dice]

I doubt Janet would let it come to that. :x

Pre-emptive edit: Or that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My roommate bought 30 dollars worth of frozen meals and just spent 20 minutes trying to fit them all in the freezer of our dorm mini-fridge, sans boxes. Oh, the hilarity.