goldengull3 said:You have likely encountered the headlines—the proliferation of 3D printers is accelerating at a pace that many claim will trigger a second industrial revolution.
Billions are being poured into this development. In America, the primary driver is the desire to decouple industrial manufacturing from its heavy reliance on China. Much of what is currently handled by a largely semi-skilled workforce can already be printed, or will be within a few short years:
- plastic and similar components (this is already a reality)
- metal parts (already occurring sporadically)
- houses and similar structures (on the horizon)
The implications are simple. If you need a glass, you print it. If you require an auto part, a mechanic simply orders it from a "print shop," and a component is ready for installation in a matter of hours—eliminating the need for shipping or massive inventories.
Looking for specialized pasta? Even Kraft Heinz is exploring 3D printing:
In an era where a 3D printer can produce product prototypes, floor tiles, miniature replicas, aircraft components, or even custom sweets, it stands to reason that one could print bespoke pasta. This is precisely the objective of Kraft Heinz, which, in collaboration with the RAND Corporation in Silicon Valley, has begun developing a prototype device designed for 3D pasta printing.
The goal is to engineer a printer specifically for restaurants aiming to offer a unique service: serving pasta in customized shapes and flavors, prepared almost instantly upon ordering.
Perhaps you need an entire house? That is also possible; walls can be erected in 24 hours:
On a cleared and leveled site, workers would lay down two rails a few feet further apart than the eventual building’s width and a computer-controlled contour crafter would take over from there. A gantry-type crane with a hanging nozzle and a components-placing arm would travel along the rails. The nozzle would spit out concrete in layers to create hollow walls, and then fill in the walls with additional concrete… humans would hang doors and insert windows.
http://www.psfk.com/2014/01/concrete...er.html#!sfIHV
Millions of jobs will vanish in the coming years. Of course, new ones will emerge—someone must design, assemble, and maintain these printers, just as someone must handle design, sales, and intellectual property protection.
What will undeniably disappear are the low-skill positions in manufacturing, logistics, assembly, and certain sectors of construction. This shift will carry profound political consequences; as the industrial structure shifts, so does the demand in the labor market. Developed nations will no longer be seeking factory workers, but specialists.
Ultimately, this is a subject of intense contemplation in developed nations, but I wonder if anyone here is truly paying attention.
The sector that will truly flourish due to 3D printing technology is spaceflight, along with entirely new industries born from it. Through 3D printing, commercial space travel will finally become financially viable, which marks the beginning of true, practical space exploitation. In fact, 3D printers capable of "printing" habitats on the Moon are already in development, and the next logical step is active mining within the asteroid belt—where there is enough exotic metal and other alloys to fuel exploitation for the next 100,000 years.
Within our own lifetimes—perhaps thirty or forty years from now—we will witness miniature robotic probes mining asteroids in the belt, processing that material on the Moon, and sending refined, pure raw materials back to Earth.
Most vocational jobs and those requiring only a high school diploma will disappear over the next fifty years due to the advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence... yet our politicians continue to drone on about training even more waiters, cooks, and other service-sector workers. The children being educated for those roles are, quite frankly, a doomed generation.
