Everyone is always afraid of how the next big technological advance is going to affect our society. Take cell phones and pagers for example; we have become more efficient but also more reliant on them. They have had both positive and negative affects, some intended and others unintended. With the cell phone, you get faster, more real time communication, but with advancement, you see a steady trend of people becoming more wired to technology (e.g., walking and talking, becoming disengaged with friends and family, etc.). This is one of those things, as is with the 3D printer, in which you must weigh the pros and cons, and evaluate the impact it will have on society, not just for now, but also as it adapts and changes. At first, we used cell phones just for phone calls. Similar to the first cell phones, 3D printing is not widely used and accepted. Today, we use cell phones for the internet, texting, gaming, and many other things. With that being said, I would be very interested in seeing how the 3D printing of today will change in the future. These are the things we need to be thinking about when producing laws and regulations in new industries. Furthermore, we need to be careful because the production of weapons via 3D printing could affect the way our country regulates the entire system.
One of the other serious things to consider is the ability to bring something so sophisticated to areas that may not be so advanced. When reading Starr’s article that talks about NASA’s first 3D print in space, I had an idea relating to bringing 3D printing to the International Space Station. It’s such an amazing thing to be able to print out a part needed in a place that’s so far away from any type of civilization (Starr). You can apply the same idea to areas of the world that have little access to highly specialized items. These places could have the ability to print out a commodity that would have otherwise been much too difficult to obtain. I think that the coming months and years will reveal whether or not 3D printing could have such affects on the isolated parts of the world.
As you can see, 3D printing has many positive and negative affects on society. I personally think that people may be focusing a bit too much on weapon manufacturing, and need to look a little more into all the other positive ways 3D printing could help our communities and other organizations alike. We talked a lot about 3D printing in class, as well as the implications it can have on society, both good and bad. However, there is much more to 3D printing than weapon manufacturing, and I hope I have helped shed some light on the greater possibilities that this technology could bring. Additionally, referring to the video we watched in class, they weren't manufacturing entire weapons, but were producing less significant parts that play no major role in the actual firing of the weapon. With that being said, I believe that they could produce a whole weapon. We need to proceed with caution and reflect on the negative affects most of the newer technologies have had on us. The cell phone and internet have played a major part in wars, radio activated bombs, and propaganda on the web, but the positive effects of these technologies have greatly outweighed their negative counterparts. 3D printing is going to be a huge area of interest in the coming years, and I cannot wait to see what it brings.
Starr, Michelle. "NASA Completes First Successful In-space 3D-printing Project." CNET. N.p., 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
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