8/11/2019 Economist - 3D Printers.doc

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print a do&en, see if there is a mar!et for them, and print 2 more if there is, modifying the

design using feedbac! from early users.

This will be a boon to inventors and startups, because trying out new products will become

less ris!y and e9pensive. $nd %ust as opensource programmers collaborate by sharing

software code, engineers are already starting to collaborate on opensource designs for

ob%ects and hardware.

The jobless technology

$ technological change so profound will reset the economics of manufacturing. +ome believe

it will decentralise the business completely, reversing the urbanisation that accompanies

industrialisation. There will be no need for factories, goes the logic, when every village has a

fabricator that can produce items when needed. ?p to a point, perhaps. 3ut the economic and

social bene:ts of cities go far beyond their ability to attract wor!ers to man assembly lines.

;thers maintain that, by reducing the need for factory wor!ers, 45 printing will undermine the

advantage of lowcost, lowwage countries and thus repatriate manufacturing capacity to the

rich world. "t might- but $sian manufacturers are %ust as well placed as anyone else to adopt

the technology. $nd even if 45 printing does bring manufacturing bac! to developed

countries, it may not create many %obs, since it is less labourintensive than standard

manufacturing.

The technology will have implications not %ust for the distribution of capital and %obs, but also

for intellectualproperty "'/ rules. @hen ob%ects can be described in a digital :le, they

become much easier to copy and distributeand, of course, to pirate. Aust as! the music

industry. @hen the blueprints for a new toy, or a designer shoe, escape onto the internet, the

chances that the owner of the "' will lose out are greater.

There are sure to be calls for restrictions on the use of 45 printers, and lawsuits about how

e9isting "' laws should be applied. $s with opensource software, new noncommercial models

will emerge. "t is unclear whether 45 printing re*uires e9isting rules to be tightened which

could hamper innovation/ or loosened which could encourage piracy/. The lawyers are, no

doubt, rubbing their hands.

Aust as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 12or the printing

press in 1B2, or the transistor in 102it is impossible to foresee the longterm impact of 45

printing. 3ut the technology is coming, and it is li!ely to disrupt every :eld it touches.

Companies, regulators and entrepreneurs should start thin!ing about it now. ;ne thing, atleast, seems clear( although 45 printing will create winners and losers in the short term, in the

long run it will e9pand the realm of industryand imagination.