Oh. My. God.

[schwap23]

This is both exhilirating and terrifying at the same time...
Kevin Kelly points the way ahead. Again.Essentially, you combine a 3-D motion capture system with a rapid prototyper. This enables you to make full size, three dimensional 'sketches', which you can then pick up and noodle around with

Comments

[eriktheplaid]

Yeah, it's still very crude, but add a VR component, so you can see what you're doing and edit the results before printing and it and that's a very, well, awesome prospect.

It may not be cheap, but it might not be as much as we think. If you could hook something like that up to a Fab@Home unit, or even, eventually a RepRap the possibilities become immense.

And really, the design portion of the unit could be in a public space, you fine tune it, maybe print it there, or take the file home and print as many as you like.

My initial reaction was the same as yours, in the short-term (when such things are - well, "crude" would be a kind word - it will have little to no effect on the industry, and what effect it has is likely to be positive. ("Wow, this is harder than I thought!")

I didn't see you as the carriage maker, because there's an obvious advantage to your products, but he probably thought "who would want that? It belches smoke, it's slower than a horse, it breaks down, and you have to feed it that gas-o-petrol stuff, which is dangerous!"

On the other hand, it's going to be a lot more than your industry that will be turned on its head if this kind of things sees mass production.

I still can't help thinking that while it will fundamentally change the industry (anyone can do it) there will always be room for the artisan (but few can do it well.) Then again, our mass-produced life is chock-full of counter-examples, so what do I know.