Some Monday morning design inspiration.
A very interesting 50 minute presentation by Industrial Designer Scott Summit on the landscape of 3D printing and its future.
Discussing 3D printing, a manufacturing method which provides limitless complexity of product shape with no mold investment costs, for a made on demand business model which requires no inventory. Fabrication where added design complexity often reduces costs as less raw materials are needed.
“OK, SO YOU CAN CREATE ANYTHING, NOW WHAT?” – Scott Summit
An inspiring start to the week, enjoy this one with your morning coffee (maybe also have your notepad handy).
74 FOOTWEAR DESIGN CONSULTING 
The essence of what i want to say is…
Take a look to what Scott Summit already said: “Ok, so you can create anything, now what?”
When with the beginning of the 90s the digital revolution prospered nobody could see that these events would undermine the classical understanding of journalism one time. Now we are in the situation that the number of newspaper readers decreases because all they want to know they can find in the internet. However, the internet itself is cramped with bad and wrong information. Is there investigative journalism at all?! Journalism must be independent. How can it be independent if all the information we find in the internet is for free and informative homepages are only financed with by commercials and advertising? It`s only a personal prediction and a metaphor for what could happen
in a related way with 3D printing. Let`s exaggerate… image every household would own such a perfect 3D printing machine that could produce anything you want it to produce. There would`t be a reason for us anymore to go shopping. Neither we would have to go shopping in the city nor were we interested in buying things in the internet. So again – in comparison to journalism – a whole system and capitalistic infrastructure would become subverted! Of course we can’t stop that change and obviously we should not stop that change. Since there are great advantages as we can see in the youtube video, for example, for medical fields… and also for the design industry. It will become pretty easy to develop prototypes. All that is quite useful.
So in conclusion i can say – at least for my own – that if we change parts of a system we have to rethink the whole system again. It may go so far that we even have to rethink not only the system itself but also the values and ethical questions regarding the upcoming “system”…
The reason for me to comment 3D printing is not that i don’t believe it its opportunities. I just want to make clear that innovation does not essentially mean that everything becomes easier. It just brings another arrangement of how the thinks work together. What for us may be innovation for others may be regression. We estimate that new possibility because we could use its actual products such as prototypes. But for others who could not use its possibilities by integrating its products into their life – if i may exaggerate at that point – for example as far as ancient tribes in the tropics are concerned, there will be not at least a single advantage.
A new technology is only then of high value when the society around can find a proper use for this new technology. The technology itself is not “sacred”… please let us not forget that.
what you say about 3D printing eliminating the need to go shopping and the amount of dissinformation on the internet is interesting. Have you read “The Machine Stops” by E.M.Forster? Its a good read..Down load it here http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
Reblogged this on and commented:
The essence of what i want to say is…
Take a look to what Scott Summit already said: “Ok, so you can create anything, now what?”
When with the beginning of the 90s the digital revolution prospered nobody could see that these events would undermine the classical understanding of journalism one time. Now we are in the situation that the number of newspaper readers decreases because all they want to know they can find in the internet. However, the internet itself is cramped with bad and wrong information. Is there investigative journalism at all?! Journalism must be independent. How can it be independent if all the information we find in the internet is for free and informative homepages are only financed with by commercials and advertising? It`s only a personal prediction and a metaphor for what could happen
in a related way with 3D printing. Let`s exaggerate… image every household would own such a perfect 3D printing machine that could produce anything you want it to produce. There would`t be a reason for us anymore to go shopping. Neither we would have to go shopping in the city nor were we interested in buying things in the internet. So again – in comparison to journalism – a whole system and capitalistic infrastructure would become subverted! Of course we can’t stop that change and obviously we should not stop that change. Since there are great advantages as we can see in the youtube video, for example, for medical fields… and also for the design industry. It will become pretty easy to develop prototypes. All that is quite useful.
So in conclusion i can say – at least for my own – that if we change parts of a system we have to rethink the whole system again. It may go so far that we even have to rethink not only the system itself but also the values and ethical questions regarding the upcoming “system”…
The reason for me to comment 3D printing is not that i don’t believe it its opportunities. I just want to make clear that innovation does not essentially mean that everything becomes easier. It just brings another arrangement of how the thinks work together. What for us may be innovation for others may be regression. We estimate that new possibility because we could use its actual products such as prototypes. But for others who could not use its possibilities by integrating its products into their life – if i may exaggerate at that point – for example as far as ancient tribes in the tropics are concerned, there will be not at least a single advantage.
A new technology is only then of high value when the society around can find a proper use for this new technology. The technology itself is not “sacred”… please let us not forget that.