Singularity Alert: 3D Printing

[alfred russel]

Singularity, Interrupted. 

A Factory in Every Foyer

Will 3-D printers ever make sense for home use?
By Seth Stevenson

We keep hearing that 3-D printing is the future. Very soon, it seems—like maybe in July or so?—we'll all have Star Trek–type replicators installed in our homes. "Computer," you'll say, as you nibble a pastry, "please fabricate me a comfy new couch." And lo, a sectional recliner with integrated cup holders will instantly appear. Or so goes the fantasy.

How close are we to this scenario, really? Will there soon be a factory in every foyer? At-home 3-D printing is thus far a fledgling market. Companies have been racing to create printers that combine reasonable cost, compact size, and user-friendly operation. But it's not clear that anyone's hit that sweet spot yet. To get a sense of the current state of at-home 3-D printing, I borrowed one of the latest models. Not one of those industrial jobbies that get used by big companies, but rather a "desktop" printer designed for consumer use.

When the Solidoodle 4—retailing for $1,000, and vaguely resembling an obese microwave—arrived at the Slate offices, I eagerly unpacked it in my cubicle. I threaded the spool of filament (like a bobbin of yarn, if the yarn was made of ABS plastic and the bobbin was the size of a paint can) into the printer's nozzle. I connected the printer to my laptop's USB port. I fired the thing up, with a whir and a hum. I assumed I'd soon be awash in an endless supply of newly conjured 3-D stuff.

But the moment I attempted to print my first object, I realized that this device isn't really designed for the average, moderately tech-savvy consumer. It's made for people who possess either A) infinite patience, B) a preternatural attention to detail, or, preferably, C) a post-graduate degree in mechanical engineering. For example, the program you download to your computer so you can control the printer is full of buttons labeled with phrases like "Go Dump Area" and "Flow Multiply" and "Kill Slicer" and—somehow both reassuring and worrisome at the same time—"Emergency Stop."

This last function made me acutely aware that a powerful machine was perched upon my desk. A machine capable of generating furious heat and spitting out molten plastic—which, given my lack of expertise, could easily splash about the room and end up melting co-workers' eyes. At this point, I decided it might be prudent to call Solidoodle tech support.

Within moments, an extremely helpful fellow named Joel was on the line, walking me through the setup process. He instructed me to heat the extruder (or as I'd been calling it, the nozzle) to 215 degrees. Then he had me click over to Thingiverse.com and download a simple design for a bottle opener. Confusingly, he asked if I happened to have a can of hairspray on hand. "Maybe like Aquanet?" he suggested. "The kind of stuff you might use to keep a mohawk in place?" I inquired of a nearby colleague, but she was not in possession of any hair care products. Luckily, this turned out to be noncrucial. Joel explained that the hairspray becomes necessary only if the object you're printing is sliding around on the printer bed—some Aquanet, applied to the bed, helps stick things in place.

Winging it without any styling aerosols, I sent the bottle-opener program from my laptop to the printer, clicked "Run," and watched with glee as the Solidoodle sprung to life. The nozzle darted to and fro, extruding a thin stream of plastic with what appeared to be solemn purpose. I bid goodbye to Joel and hung up, confident I'd figured this thing out. And I watched as layer after layer of carefully laid filament slowly formed ... an amorphous, incoherent plastic blob.

OK, a less than total success. But I wasn't deterred. And I refused to call Joel again. I began to play around, moving the extruder on its x- and y-axis with a click of my mouse. I turned the heat back on and coaxed it up to 215 degrees. Then I noticed that my filament was snapped, and I had to rethread it. But a small piece was stuck inside the nozzle. I called Joel again.

"Do you have a sequential set of Allen wrenches?" he asked. "Preferably in metric? I'm pretty sure it's a 1.5mm screw but you might want to have an assortment." I turned to my colleague again, but she was no more help with Allen wrenches than she'd been with the hairspray. "OK," said Joel, "you can try to melt it out. Heat it to a really high temperature but try not to damage the machine or hurt yourself."

Using a pair of extra-long tweezers that came with the printer, I was able to half-melt, half-yank the filament out, rethread it, and try again. Once more, the printer cheerily jumped into action. This time I'd set the bed too low, so the plastic drooped from the nozzle with no platform to land on. Instead of a bottle opener, I ended up with a scraggly bird's nest.

Now absolutely determined to print some sort of recognizable object, I raised up the bed, heated the nozzle, and downloaded a program that builds a tiny robot figurine. This time, everything seemed to work correctly. A pair of little robot legs took shape. And then the printer just halted, for no discernible reason, leaving a sad, half-formed robot body, almost poignant in its abandonment—with a singed spot where the hot nozzle stayed in one place for too long. I call it Robot, Interrupted:

I spent some time attempting to suss out where I went wrong. But after a while, I gave up. I mean, let's say I got the printer working again. Best case scenario, I've melted no one's eyes and I've got a new robot figurine. Woohoo. I don't need or want a robot figurine. And $1,000 for the printer plus $43 for each spool of filament is a hefty price to pay for a functionless, semidecorative piece of plastic I could buy for like 23 cents.

What's more, the printer was loud enough that office colleagues were beginning to complain about the racket. It was emitting a smell not unlike that of burning hair. And it was taking forever to print out these objects that weren't quite objects.

All of which points to some fundamental problems with the current state of desktop 3-D printing. Right now, even if you can tolerate the printer's noise and stink and interminable wait time, there's basically nothing you can make that you actually want or that is cost effective. It's all trinkets and gewgaws. The most popular patterns at Thingiverse are pen holders and elephant figurines and flimsy, unattractive iPhone cases.

OK, perhaps you can print that one little missing Ikea part you need to hold your dresser together. But only if filament plastic is a hearty enough material to do the trick. (You're not going to smelt steel at home. Your living room isn't Magnitogorsk.) Will an Ikea-type scenario come into play often enough to justify the substantial cost of the printer and the spools? I doubt it.

Some folks might enjoy making various DIY widgets at home, as a hobby, iterating their own designs and creating new products. Bully for them. I liken these early adopters to the kind of people who were on ham radios in 1923.

Until there's a killer app for the desktop 3-D printer, though, I can't see any reason for the average person to buy one. And I can't yet imagine what this killer app would be. What could you manufacture at home in a manner that's cheaper and more efficient than could be done in a giant factory? I'm open to ideas. If "customizable, personal designs" is part of your answer, remember that those designs will be limited to plastic, and that any use of wood or metal or suede will require additional procurement and assemblage, which means speed and convenience are out the window. There were very sound reasons behind society's transition to centralized manufacturing.

Consider: Once upon a time, people purchased sewing patterns (like a program from Thingiverse) and yards of fabric (like filament) and they made their own clothes. I wasn't alive back then, but I'm pretty sure the process sucked. It took lots of time and effort and the clothes were often amateurishly constructed. Sure, consumer sewing machines got better, and made things faster and easier and more professional looking. But nowadays, save for DIY fashion enthusiasts and grandmas with lots of time on their hands, people aren't buying many at-home sewing machines. They're a novelty item with little practical purpose. Most people would much rather just get their clothes from a store—already assembled by people employing industrial-level efficiency and a wide variety of materials.

I could be wrong. Perhaps today's 3-D printers are akin to the cellphones of 1987. Over time, we'll graduate from the Motorola DynaTac 8000X to the iPhone 5s—smaller, faster, more capable, and, eventually, indispensable. But I'll bet you a pile of extruded plastic goo that I'm right.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/03/solidoodle_4_testing_the_home_3_d_printer.html

[Maximus]

Singularity, Interrupted. 

A Factory in Every Foyer

Will 3-D printers ever make sense for home use?
By Seth Stevenson

We keep hearing that 3-D printing is the future. Very soon, it seems—like maybe in July or so?—we'll all have Star Trek–type replicators installed in our homes. "Computer," you'll say, as you nibble a pastry, "please fabricate me a comfy new couch." And lo, a sectional recliner with integrated cup holders will instantly appear. Or so goes the fantasy.

How close are we to this scenario, really? Will there soon be a factory in every foyer? At-home 3-D printing is thus far a fledgling market. Companies have been racing to create printers that combine reasonable cost, compact size, and user-friendly operation. But it's not clear that anyone's hit that sweet spot yet. To get a sense of the current state of at-home 3-D printing, I borrowed one of the latest models. Not one of those industrial jobbies that get used by big companies, but rather a "desktop" printer designed for consumer use.

When the Solidoodle 4—retailing for $1,000, and vaguely resembling an obese microwave—arrived at the Slate offices, I eagerly unpacked it in my cubicle. I threaded the spool of filament (like a bobbin of yarn, if the yarn was made of ABS plastic and the bobbin was the size of a paint can) into the printer's nozzle. I connected the printer to my laptop's USB port. I fired the thing up, with a whir and a hum. I assumed I'd soon be awash in an endless supply of newly conjured 3-D stuff.

But the moment I attempted to print my first object, I realized that this device isn't really designed for the average, moderately tech-savvy consumer. It's made for people who possess either A) infinite patience, B) a preternatural attention to detail, or, preferably, C) a post-graduate degree in mechanical engineering. For example, the program you download to your computer so you can control the printer is full of buttons labeled with phrases like "Go Dump Area" and "Flow Multiply" and "Kill Slicer" and—somehow both reassuring and worrisome at the same time—"Emergency Stop."

This last function made me acutely aware that a powerful machine was perched upon my desk. A machine capable of generating furious heat and spitting out molten plastic—which, given my lack of expertise, could easily splash about the room and end up melting co-workers' eyes. At this point, I decided it might be prudent to call Solidoodle tech support.

Within moments, an extremely helpful fellow named Joel was on the line, walking me through the setup process. He instructed me to heat the extruder (or as I'd been calling it, the nozzle) to 215 degrees. Then he had me click over to Thingiverse.com and download a simple design for a bottle opener. Confusingly, he asked if I happened to have a can of hairspray on hand. "Maybe like Aquanet?" he suggested. "The kind of stuff you might use to keep a mohawk in place?" I inquired of a nearby colleague, but she was not in possession of any hair care products. Luckily, this turned out to be noncrucial. Joel explained that the hairspray becomes necessary only if the object you're printing is sliding around on the printer bed—some Aquanet, applied to the bed, helps stick things in place.

Winging it without any styling aerosols, I sent the bottle-opener program from my laptop to the printer, clicked "Run," and watched with glee as the Solidoodle sprung to life. The nozzle darted to and fro, extruding a thin stream of plastic with what appeared to be solemn purpose. I bid goodbye to Joel and hung up, confident I'd figured this thing out. And I watched as layer after layer of carefully laid filament slowly formed ... an amorphous, incoherent plastic blob.

OK, a less than total success. But I wasn't deterred. And I refused to call Joel again. I began to play around, moving the extruder on its x- and y-axis with a click of my mouse. I turned the heat back on and coaxed it up to 215 degrees. Then I noticed that my filament was snapped, and I had to rethread it. But a small piece was stuck inside the nozzle. I called Joel again.

"Do you have a sequential set of Allen wrenches?" he asked. "Preferably in metric? I'm pretty sure it's a 1.5mm screw but you might want to have an assortment." I turned to my colleague again, but she was no more help with Allen wrenches than she'd been with the hairspray. "OK," said Joel, "you can try to melt it out. Heat it to a really high temperature but try not to damage the machine or hurt yourself."

Using a pair of extra-long tweezers that came with the printer, I was able to half-melt, half-yank the filament out, rethread it, and try again. Once more, the printer cheerily jumped into action. This time I'd set the bed too low, so the plastic drooped from the nozzle with no platform to land on. Instead of a bottle opener, I ended up with a scraggly bird's nest.

Now absolutely determined to print some sort of recognizable object, I raised up the bed, heated the nozzle, and downloaded a program that builds a tiny robot figurine. This time, everything seemed to work correctly. A pair of little robot legs took shape. And then the printer just halted, for no discernible reason, leaving a sad, half-formed robot body, almost poignant in its abandonment—with a singed spot where the hot nozzle stayed in one place for too long. I call it Robot, Interrupted:

I spent some time attempting to suss out where I went wrong. But after a while, I gave up. I mean, let's say I got the printer working again. Best case scenario, I've melted no one's eyes and I've got a new robot figurine. Woohoo. I don't need or want a robot figurine. And $1,000 for the printer plus $43 for each spool of filament is a hefty price to pay for a functionless, semidecorative piece of plastic I could buy for like 23 cents.

What's more, the printer was loud enough that office colleagues were beginning to complain about the racket. It was emitting a smell not unlike that of burning hair. And it was taking forever to print out these objects that weren't quite objects.

All of which points to some fundamental problems with the current state of desktop 3-D printing. Right now, even if you can tolerate the printer's noise and stink and interminable wait time, there's basically nothing you can make that you actually want or that is cost effective. It's all trinkets and gewgaws. The most popular patterns at Thingiverse are pen holders and elephant figurines and flimsy, unattractive iPhone cases.

OK, perhaps you can print that one little missing Ikea part you need to hold your dresser together. But only if filament plastic is a hearty enough material to do the trick. (You're not going to smelt steel at home. Your living room isn't Magnitogorsk.) Will an Ikea-type scenario come into play often enough to justify the substantial cost of the printer and the spools? I doubt it.

Some folks might enjoy making various DIY widgets at home, as a hobby, iterating their own designs and creating new products. Bully for them. I liken these early adopters to the kind of people who were on ham radios in 1923.

Until there's a killer app for the desktop 3-D printer, though, I can't see any reason for the average person to buy one. And I can't yet imagine what this killer app would be. What could you manufacture at home in a manner that's cheaper and more efficient than could be done in a giant factory? I'm open to ideas. If "customizable, personal designs" is part of your answer, remember that those designs will be limited to plastic, and that any use of wood or metal or suede will require additional procurement and assemblage, which means speed and convenience are out the window. There were very sound reasons behind society's transition to centralized manufacturing.

Consider: Once upon a time, people purchased sewing patterns (like a program from Thingiverse) and yards of fabric (like filament) and they made their own clothes. I wasn't alive back then, but I'm pretty sure the process sucked. It took lots of time and effort and the clothes were often amateurishly constructed. Sure, consumer sewing machines got better, and made things faster and easier and more professional looking. But nowadays, save for DIY fashion enthusiasts and grandmas with lots of time on their hands, people aren't buying many at-home sewing machines. They're a novelty item with little practical purpose. Most people would much rather just get their clothes from a store—already assembled by people employing industrial-level efficiency and a wide variety of materials.

I could be wrong. Perhaps today's 3-D printers are akin to the cellphones of 1987. Over time, we'll graduate from the Motorola DynaTac 8000X to the iPhone 5s—smaller, faster, more capable, and, eventually, indispensable. But I'll bet you a pile of extruded plastic goo that I'm right.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/03/solidoodle_4_testing_the_home_3_d_printer.html

Dude doesn't seem to have much imagination.

[The Minsky Moment]

Dude doesn't seem to have much imagination.

So a lot like most people. 

[Siege]

Philosophical Singularity Babble crap from David Chalmers, but very interesting, me thinks.

http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf


"Speaking for myself, I am not sure whether a further-fact view or a deflationary
view is correct. If the further-fact view is correct, then the status of destructive and reconstructive
uploading is unclear, but I think that gradual uploading plausibly suffices for survival. If the
deflationary view is correct, gradual uploading is close to as good as ordinary survival, while
destructive and reconstructive uploading are reasonably close to as good. Either way, I think that
gradual uploading is certainly the safest method of uploading.

A number of further questions about uploading remain. Of course there are any number of
social, legal, and moral issues that I have not begun to address. Here I address just two further
questions.

One question concerns cognitive enhancement. Suppose that before or after uploading, our
cognitive systems are enhanced to the point that they use a wholly dierent cognitive architecture.
Would we survive this process? Again, it seems to me that the answers are clearest in the case
where the enhancement is gradual. If my cognitive system is overhauled one component at a time,
and if at every stage there is reasonable psychological continuity with the previous stage, then I
think it is reasonable to hold that the original person survives.

Another question is a practical one. If reconstructive uploading will eventually be possible,
how can one ensure that it happens? There have been billions of humans in the history of the
planet. It is not clear that our successors will want to reconstruct every person that ever lived, or
even every person of which there are records. So if one is interested in immortality, how can one
maximize the chances of reconstruction? One might try keeping a bank account with compound
interest to pay them for doing so, but it is hard to know whether our financial system will be
relevant in the future, especially after an intelligence explosion.

My own strategy is to write about the singularity and about uploading. Perhaps this will
encourage our successors to reconstruct me, if only to prove me wrong.

11 Conclusions

Will there be a singularity? I think that it is certainly not out of the question, and that the main
obstacles are likely to be obstacles of motivation rather than obstacles of capacity.
How should we negotiate the singularity? Very carefully, by building appropriate values into
machines, and by building the first AI and AI+ systems in virtual worlds.

How can we integrate into a post-singularity world? By gradual uploading followed by enhancement
if we are still around then, and by reconstructive uploading followed by enhancement
if we are not.

Bibliography

[Siege]

Singularity, Interrupted. 

A Factory in Every Foyer

Will 3-D printers ever make sense for home use?
By Seth Stevenson


http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/03/solidoodle_4_testing_the_home_3_d_printer.html

So, because the technology is not there, it means it will never get there?

What a complete lack of understanding of technological evolution and artificial selection.
If this guy was right, we would still hunting without tools, and farming would be an unknown technology, ages away.

[mongers]

Hi Seigy, hows things?


You and some commandos should go and hijack that Iranian 'CV' when they lauch it and use it as a pirate base to survive the singularity.   

[Siege]

Anissimov is a retard. This is what he thinks:


"Surely no harm could come from building a chess-playing robot, could it? In this paper we argue that such a robot will indeed be dangerous unless it is designed very carefully. Without special precautions, it will resist being turned off, will try to break into other machines and make copies of itself, and will try to acquire resources without regard for anyone else’s safety. These potentially harmful behaviors will occur not because they were programmed in at the start, but because of the intrinsic nature of goal driven systems."

[Siege]

Hi Seigy, hows things?


You and some commandos should go and hijack that Iranian 'CV' when they lauch it and use it as a pirate base to survive the singularity.   

The singularity is the unevitable end of social and technological evolution through the process of natural selection.
Post-singularity social and technological developments cannot be visualized from our perspective in time.
After I graduate from college I plan to write a book on it.

In other words, my premise is:

1- All planets that can hold higher life forms will do so over time.
2- All planets that can hold higher life forms will evolve intelligent life over time.
3- All intelligent life will evolve into a technological civilization through the process of natural selection. (The most tech advance society will rule over the less tech advanced)
4- All technological civilizations will reach the Technological Singularity. (Defined as the pace of tech dev surpases human perception and the development of Strong AIs)

So, basicly the universe must be teaming with life.
Caviats are that not all civilizations will survive step 3 past the nuclear age, and not all civs will survive step 4 past the Singularity, due to several scenarios like the gray goo, etc.
In case a planet suffers a civilization destroying event, whether natural or
'man-made", it reverts to step 1, and the race for the Singularity starts again.

[jimmy olsen]

Another little thought experiment back in 1810.  Imagine the village of farmers you are visiting is having a festival day; in a field some young men are playing a traditional ball-game, quite literally as a past-time.  Now imagine explaining how in the future, not only will one will be able have a "job" consisting of playing this game - but that some of those holding such jobs will be among the wealthiest and best paid people in the country, and that additional jobs will exist in the tens thousands of people to coach and manage, provide instruction, operate and capitalize joint-stock companies that employ such people, convey these players around the country for their exhibitions of skill, write about and talk about their games in newspapers and other forms of communication they would find unimaginable, and even give advice to people on how to construct imaginary groups of such players.  They wouldn't just think you were insane.  They would simply be unable to understand what you were talking about - there would be no frame of reference in their minds to understand it.

Maybe the farmers wouldn't understand it, but someone with a classical education would. Gladiators and charioteers were very rich in their day.

[The Minsky Moment]

Those were death sports.  Very different mentality.  And by that time 1000 years gone.

[Siege]

WTF, Mimsky. I want to know what you think.
I might disagree with you 90% of the time, but that doesn't change the fact that I have a high regard for your opinion.

[The Minsky Moment]

Well thanks Siege, but I'm not sure what specifically you want me to opine on.
We've been living through an epoch of rapid technological change for quite some time on.  It is of course impossible to predict the long-run impacts on the economy from future technological developments.  But our experience so far suggests that there is no reason a priori to think that even paradigm-shitfing technological change will lead to mass unemployment or rob people of their drive to perform "work" in some sense.
What may very well happen is that our collective concept of what consitutes productive work may change.
Will the financial system change?  of course it will.  It has changed quite a lot within the span of my own lifetime, so one would expect quite a lot of change over a 100 year + time horizon.
But it is difficult to imagine the concept of "credit" disappearing; it has been with us since the earliest civilization.