The future is here, friends.
For years, novelists and Hollywood writers alike have been imagining a world where you don’t have to go to the store to buy something, you can just have a hole in the wall spit it out for you. When 3D printing was invented by Charles Hull in 1984 it seemed like we weren’t far from having this fancy tech. But then we found out it takes 6+ hours to print a small cube, so everybody went back to their convenience stores and shopping malls forgetting about the future. But the future has recently tickled our fancy again when chemical engineer Joseph DeSimone and his team showcased their new, and extremely fast (relatively speaking) 3D printer.
DeSimone founded Carbon 3D, a startup in California that has sped up the process of materializing objects out of thin air. DeSimone said his team works with projections, lasers, and some cool synthetic goo that came straight out of the Terminator movies — seriously, DeSimone said he and his team were inspired by the t1000, which is the bad-cop robot from T2 that liquifies and rises from a puddle (it’s as gross as it is cool).
And for my fellow nerds who enjoy TED talks, you can watch the creator himself display the genius, potential, and ingenuity behind Carbon 3D. Is this the future of manufacturing and what will that mean for jobs in America? Bringing 3D printing into homes and businesses will revolutionize business the same way the internet revolutionized the communication. But, bear in mind how it also changed the way we write, speak, obtain information, gather news, and learn (and let’s not forget the poor libraries). This powerful technology certainly leaves us with a lot to think about:
[Featured Image Credit: The Guardian]