An Almanac of Emergent Technology
A new kind of printer can "print out" actual objects at home.
Like an inkjet which mixes red green and blue into full-colour photography, the 3-D printer has cartridges that can be filled with different liquids such as molten plastic, metal and chocolate. By depositing droplets of plastic, layer by layer, it can print out a range of objects (which are far more sophisticated than just Tupperware).
The manufacturing process - a mysterious third party separating us from everyday objects - is no longer a miracle, but predictable. We've grown tired of the smooth edges and clean lines of mass-produced dental floss containers, yoghurt pots and laptops.
Imperfection is the new ideal. It's evident in the return to anti-manufacturing, with movements like the renaissance in home-made crafts giving value to crooked seams, squiggly stitching and jagged edges that defy the aesthetic perfection of made-in-China.
Nouveaux manufacturing is interested in the homogeneity of process rather than creating identical, perfect objects. Rapid prototyping, laser cutting, recycling: all of these manufacturing processes replace the inscrutability of perfection with complex and interesting shapes which bear evidence of the process by which they were made.
Plastic, once the muse of the manufacturing process - flexible, durable and cheap - has been sullied in recent years by littered gutters, Barbie dolls and the controversy of plastic surgery.
We are, though, entering a new Age of Plastic, in which dustbins will be a valuable resource and we'll mine for in-fill land sites. A new breed of plastics is emerging which are sustainable, intelligent and responsive. Plastic will soon be able to conduct electricity, be stronger than steel and be biologically compatible (plastic organs and plastic blood will be used for emergency transplants and transfusions).
Fab@home (fabricate-at-home) is more than just a toasted-sandwich-maker. It's the marriage of New Plastics and New Manufacturing in "home-manufacturing": making goods which are home-made and manufactured at the same time.
A means of production is composed not just of materials and tools, but ideas and ingenuity, too. Perhaps a new breed of designer will emerge, disguised in computer programmes. Perhaps one day, instead of buying a Martino Gamper chair, we will buy his software (view How to . . . make 100 Chairs in 100 Days)
