Materialization of the Internet

Materialization of the Internet: Or The Desktop Factory

Jesse A Greenberg December 2009


Introduction
The Internet is praised as a place where all aspects of ones life can be easily accessed and organized. It is suspended on a platform in a mist of open horizons of limitless knowledge and discoveries. Always open and adapting, the Internet seems to be able to take over all aspects of your life. Now that one generation has grown up in a highly digitized society of networked culture, what can the next generation expect?
Flat screens and handheld devices are portals to the Internet, a two-dimensional realm of existence that offers information, entertainment, science, and more. However, we are a species that lives in the real world and we desire objects. In fact, we require basic three-dimensional realities, as food and clothing.
At some point in our history, the thrust of technology shifted. Instead of industry producing physical things, our more modern world starting developing tools as portals, or interfaces that separate one from the physical world. In the lineage of information machinery, the telegraph gave way to radio, and then to television, and culminated in computers and the Internet.
These tools offer the user only a pool of information to enter, but nothing tangible to gain, unless a product is ordered and then delivered. Researchers and engineers are now speculating that this is going to change quickly with the introduction of the in-home 3-D printer. Using an industry rapid-fabrication method known as stereo-lithography, essentially placing the factory on the desktop.

Paper And Waste And Machines That Make More Waste
It is easy to think that becoming a more data based society is realistic. It is important to consider the physical means it takes to developing and maintaining that type of society. Electronic devices are mass-produced, purchased, updated, improved, and replaced, at an ever-increasing rate. Developments of large-scale information storage facilities are popping up everywhere. These are the physical hard drives required for storing information.
What if information storage technology starts developing as fast as all of our other devices? Will these facilities be abandoned or maintained and improved? What is the cost on the environment, and energy use? Each time you log on, or do a search, there are hundreds of connections being made, switches that need electric power to connect the information and pull it from its source. There is a direct correlation of physical matter that is fueling the information. Fossil fuel or other energy sources are used to produce the electricity.
Waste is also a common factor. Consider how many times you may have used Google maps and printed out that map and directions rather than owning a single map. Between 1988 and 1993 the world wide base of copiers increased by only 5% whereas the worldwide base of printers increased by 600% spiking with the introduction of the Internet in the work place. Copying is now giving way to what is called in business MOPying, or the process of producing Multiple-Original Single Prints. Whereas one single print would be Xeroxed and distributed; now one document is distributed among a group and individually printed out. The information contained in the Internet is materializing and piling high.
Services like E-Bay and Amazon can find exactly what you want and allow you to purchase it immediately. Then clerks, and shipping services retrieve and send that item to you. A trip to a store is avoided and it is easy to feel that it is immediate. Delivery, however, usually takes at least two days. Having an Amazon Kindle has enabled you to purchase a book and download it immediately in data form. But it’s still not a book.
The New York Times is accessible for free now online, viewable on your home PC, I-phone, Blackberry etc. But people still find value in an object, and want it, as a type of animalistic territoriality. Affects and intensities attest to the body’s immersion and participation in nature, chaos, and materiality. There is something that feels good about holding a paper and reading it, something people easily have given up for economic frugality.

Telegraph to Radio to TV to Games, And All Over Again to The Internet
It is believed that the Internet has completely changed the ways modern society works, but it is still rooted in the realm of information entertainment developed from the Radio onward. There still lacks any new kind of content to gain directly from the Internet. It is interesting to examine the order of development in technologies that lead up to where we are today. The telegraph as the first network that was able to transmit language thru code. It revolutionized communications, allowing far sourced information accessible nearly in an instant. Later radio eliminated the coding-decoding process required of telegraphs. Radio also eliminated the need for wires. It dealt with transmitted waves, the first form of wireless information sharing. This also allowed for new in-home technologies, accompanied by an entirely new broadcast industry.
Radio brought an audible world of news, information, speeches, music, shows and other entertainment. This technology infused a societal growth that developed a collective conscious in our population. Television leaped from what the radio had set up by adding the visual image. This made it possible for people to see what their preferences looked like and how they materialized. Commercial advertising also showed how to emulate lifestyle options by consuming accessories, equipment, clothing, music, etc.
Later the PC entered the home but in its early stages was a return to code and text, like the telegraph. Anyone who already did not need a typewriter wasn’t rushing to own a computer. As computers, games, and functions developed alongside television as the main forum for society, it is interesting to see how the computer had to develop all that society previously had done separately. Telegraph to television in a span of time much shorter than the time from the introduction of the telegraph. Suddenly, a society that cared about high quality resolution on TV and in computer games, better graphics in movies, and seeing physical things to buy in flashy ways of advertising them, also started to care about a new platform; the internet which was a text based venue again, no more than a digitized telegraph.
In its earliest days, when people became aware of the Internets popularity for work and entertainment, A.O.L, Prodigy and other programs were mostly text based forums, in which information was messaged back and forth. The introduction of photos, and more developed programs rapidly improved. But the video quality, games and other programs were not available to the degree that it had developed for TV. It’s almost surprising that people accepted such a downgrade of uses in the beginning.
But now the Internet has caught up with the possible paths of entertainment. It has progressed to seemingly endless directions. Running parallel to information technology, development always has been a mass production factory technology. No matter how much we crave information, entertainment, and need to stimulate our minds, we ultimately depend to our most core needs; food and shelter. But we also desire and require a huge inventory of physical objects.
Combination of Data And Fabrication
What if contemporary Internet services and industrial production technologies were to collide? What if all that you needed and all that you could find on the Internet could be immediately available for you? What, if the same way you can print out your map from Google, you could print out physical three-dimensional objects? This is seen as future capabilities and next major step of the Internet. It has the potential to transform our culture.
3-D printers are commonly used in major industry for prototyping parts, machining parts for tools, and models for products. There is a huge variety of
3-D printers available that work on a process of the application of thin layers of a material over and over again, to build up a full object. The materials range from ABS plastics, liquid photo polymer resins, foam carving, wax drips, vinyl sheets, metals and more. Now the processes take a while and are far from immediate and far from cheap, but rapidly advancing companies are pushing the services further. Prices have dropped radically in the last years, and the technologies are also developing further. The resolution of the materials being printed is becoming perfected and the complexity of devices that are possible to be printed now are extremely advanced. In one process, the machine is able to print a fully functioning device, layered plastic shell and body, with different colors, moving parts such as gears, hinges and ball bearings. Metal extruders can lay out circuit boards, imbedded into the design, allowing for power to be applied later for any programmed use.
Some 3D printers can even replicate themselves. The Rep-Rap 3-D printer is one of these. Rep-Rap being short for Replication Rapid-prototyper. Google’s open source programs manager Chris DiBona explains, “Think of Rep-Rap as a China on your desktop.” Using an ABS plastic spool extruded thru a heated nozzle, the Rep-Rap lays out hot plastic that cools immediately, building up layer by layer any designed item. Being durable for daily use and even food safe handling. The machine’s parts cost approximately $500; extremely cheap compared to a $30,000 industrial prototyping machine that may be found in many factories.
Still the Rep Rap, along with professional industrial 3-D printers, have many problems still to be solved. One problem is the amount of time it takes to print something. Hours can be spent on the tiniest item, and to make anything on a larger scale or with multiple parts can take days. Higher quality resolution requires longer print time. Resolution is based on the layers of material extruded plane by plane. Generally all printers’ leave a mark that usually looks like sedimentary, horizontal lines running up and down the object. It is actually the mark of the path of extrusion from the printer. Highly perfected printers do exist, but require large facilities and supplies as well as high cost of materials.
Computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) programs are also cheapening, Industrial programs can be hundreds to thousands of dollars now, and require specially programmed computers. New programs are now making this all easier, such as Google’s Sketch-up. It is available for use online. It allows simple and subtly complex 3-D rendered designs to be made, which then can be turned into files for printing.
Toys And Games And Marketing
A huge market is opened up for user-designed content that becomes a product. Toy industry analyst and consultant Richard Gottlieb has written repeatedly for the call of lowered prices for rapid-prototypers. But is there desire enough for people to own and print their own designs? Let alone toys?
Kidrobot is a designer toy company that displays their products online and in boutiques stores. These are designer toys for audiences of all ages. It is more of a collector item than a playable toy for a child. But the beauty of it is that the customer can browse thru different elements of the figures, such as choosing the heads, arms, legs and body, out of a list of designs and then have their own skin designed and printed onto the vinyl toy. If marketed properly, this can have huge variety. People could go onto the website, design a figurine within the realm that the program allows and then purchase the downloadable file to print out at home.
Heading a start-up after leaving his position as head of Microsoft Games Studios, Ed Fries thought that he might be able to sell 10,000 units of his product-personalized online game figurines. After two months, 100,000 people signed up. Using a 3-D printer he would take customers chosen frame still of their character avatars from WarCraft., a popular online game in which players battle to rise in status, collecting armor and attributes. Customers can have a 1/8th scale customized figurines. This is interesting because Warcraft is a completely virtual social world, in which people deal with each other thru their avatars. To have your avatar materialized is a complete separation from the virtual, and an appreciation of the physical and a memorializing of their virtual achievements.
There are immense possibilities of marketing for technologies like this. Through a child’s television show or online episodes, children’s favorite characters can be downloaded and printed in the home, collectable in multiple poses and costumes.
A 1970’s cartoon from French Television “BarbaPapa” is one that particularly could work well. A family of amorphous blobs shape shift into objects, tools and elastic shapes. This could be easily marketed. A certain trademarked design of a cartoon eye and color could be printed onto endlessly possible variations of form. Or an online generator could make your favorite character into any object or shape, and then print it out.
This technology could lead further to customizable products for all sorts of uses, whether it’s creating a custom handle for a specifically finicky doorknob, or a better working gear for a broken machine. Customizable living will be truly reached when this technology has advanced further.
War And Sex As Propellants For Technological Change
There is a large industry advancing these machines as well as private inventors and entrepreneurs working on their own designs. There has always been a driving force for advancement in technologies developed and financed by military and defense industries. The implications and possibilities conceived by defense contracting companies are limitless. Simply being able to have 3-D printing facilities around the globe supplied with the proper raw material could save fortunes of money and time rather than organizing and mobilizing factory, employees, equipment and vehicles.
There is not much information divulged on the experiments or advancements in the technology right now within the military industrial complex. But if history serves as a predictor, it is safe to say that if it’s a concern to the military if someone else could possibly download and print out weapons in their home. It would be to America’s best interest to develop the technology faster and better, in effect controlling the capabilities by designing the platform.
Military research has pushed technologies into perfected and highly engineered stages. But the second backbone of technological advancements and the public distribution in document sharing has been the pornography and adult entertainment industry. The adult Film industry basically created the in-home theatre system. By releasing pornography on videotapes to a very willing audience, sales of VCRs soared bringing the prices of VCR and VHS cassette tapes down, allowing a larger public to purchase the new growing industry of Hollywood films released on tape.
Adult entertainment is responsible for the set up of the 900 numbers as well as pay per view format viewing, in which a desired movie can be called in on request. After the industry was set up by the demand for readily available pornography, it opened up the roads for mainstream to use the services providing all other genres of entertainment. The Internet also flourished, after being developed by defense technologies, survived in public domain with a strong backbone of pornography.
User friendly website formats made it easier, and more accessible for all other forms of information sharing industries to join in. The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. It has created the armature of new industries and technologies and will most likely play a major role in the development of the next and newest technologies, especially if it can make virtual sexual fantasy physical.
The concept of the in-home factory, or 3-D printer, in conjunction with the Internet is based on the concepts of easy, impulsive personalized and private fulfillment. It seems to go hand in hand, with anything that can provide anonymousness. If one may be embarrassed to go to an adult store to purchase videos, they can now download them privately at home. They soon will be able to print out sex toys and devices of pleasure in the same anonymity. This will require advancements in the technology. For example, the use of skin safe materials. Such advancement could have further uses in other areas, such as dishware, silverware, any kind of food containers, medical supply, and baby bottles. The adult entertainment industry has spearheaded the way for new technologies in the past, and surely will play a part in this development simply because it’s a great economic opportunity.
Raw Material In The Closet
What does this mean for daily life? Essentially this is creating a domestic industry with a desktop factory. What will be the means of collecting the raw material? Some of these machines now require the waste of excess material, if it’s carved out of a block. Others require large spindles of ABS plastic, and some require large amounts of liquid resin. How will people store their ready to use printable material if it’s large and bulky, or requires heavy tanks? A spindle of ABS plastic or a tank of liquid photo polymer resin could sit outdoors without any problems. Perhaps customers can have a tank filled with resin, in the same way an oil truck fills your tank for home heating systems. Or a delivery service can drop off bulk materials weekly or daily. Perhaps in a further future, pipes will be routed to the home, paid by metering systems.
Its important to examine how much this takes away from the factory industry, but adds to infrastructural delivery system technologies, and what uses the road and rails will play. Will new factories have to be built that can supply large enough demand to produce these raw materials, or will old factories that already have the capabilities be converted?
What are the dangers of the in-home factory? The products are new and tested only in industrial fields for now, so the true long-term exposure to these materials is not quite yet determined. The impulsiveness of certain clients to buy downloads and print and collect is just adding so much more physical matter into existence. We already have a problem with waste disposal, recycling etc. This new technology might add more waste matter to the world, although it would eliminate packaging, boxes, bags and fuel expenses. The factories cost on the environment and the wallet can be decreased, while overseas trading from factories abroad may become completely unnecessary.
So what happens when we reach a time when we all have the factory in the home, and we have the delivery services to provide the raw materials that are safe, and we have the programs to design what we need? What dangers are then present? What about terrorist hacking possibilities? If your printer is connected to the Internet, could someone hack into your computer and have your printer print out a bomb? As of now we are no where near that possibility, but surely the US military industrial defense complex is thinking about it, from either end.
With more accessibility, and ability to deliver your own creations, will it effect your extent of needs? Ten years ago, one might not have needed a cell phone, or the Internet constantly. Now it is necessary to have a phone with the Internet on it all day. Will we go back to a more physical dependence with the introduction of these machines? Will we need physical things immediately? Having a materializer for your most impulsive ideas could have a very distracting consequence. But one could say that our most uncontrollable impulses are the ones that keep us alive, such as eating. Will this new distraction take away from valuable work or play time? What if these machines could possibly transport food?
Teleportation
Although this is far from development, there have been research and advancements in the area of teleportation, which would be the most immediate form of transport. Recently at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, physicist Christopher Monroe lead the effort thru what is now explored as quantum information processing. Essentially what the process does is copy all the information of an element, such as the clustering and spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, and assigns the atoms in another space to act the same way. The same atomic element is created in two places at once. This was accomplished by sending atoms of Ytterbium, which is a rare metal, a distance of three meters. It existed in replication in two places at once for a moment in their laboratory. “This system, has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale quantum repeater that can network quantum memories over vast distance,” says Monroe. The area has further development before any major changes can occur
Conclusion
A three-dimensional printer would affect multiple industries. Many new industries could emerge. Design and content might come from the industry, or individuals. Like Wikipedia, there could be a user-based technology, with continual upgrades and innovations; a “wiki-fabricator.”
The industry to come from this technology is going to be one that has not been seen before in earlier Internet advancement. One big difference will be the presence of physical “stuff” as large quantities of raw material, transported everywhere. Big money could be made by the most innovative material chosen as the medium, whether it is ABS plastic, liquid polymer, or something else.
Besides limitless possibilities of profits to be had, lifestyles could change. With a few clicks of the mouse, people could have their desired custom-designed object in an “instant.”