3D Printing: Instant Custom Designs

       For those of us raised on Star Trek and Jetsons cartoons, technology that could fabricate any object within minutes seemed a distant sci-fi fantasy akin to jetpacks and moon bases. But the era of 3D printing is near, rapidly setting roots in the manufacturing market place and poised to dramatically change the way in which we create our goods. 

       3D Printing is the revolutionary process by which digital designs can be transformed into real world physical objects, ranging from toys to jewelry and even complex machine parts. Thanks to an increase in government funding, box sized devices capable of custom molding metals, plastics and ceramics have dropped in price to approximately $1,000. 

       What does this mean for your every day consumer? Well for starters there will be a massive marginal increase in personalization. Utilizing a vast and open library of designs, anyone will soon be able to create customizable products in the comfort of their home. Imagine seeing something you like on Amazon, clicking on it and having a printer in your home create it right in front of you. Engineers and Inventors will also be able to create prototypes of their creations in hours, without having to utilize factories that can take several weeks to get back to them. Artists will be able to sell their designs digitally, and allow their customers to create the works in the comfort of their living room. 

       The printers achieve this by segmenting a 3D design into thin horizontal “slices”. It then creates the object layer by layer, bound by a heated nozzle or electron beam…the futuristic equivalent of “brick by brick”. This is an undeniably huge leap forward in scientific capabilities, but before we start demanding an update on our teleportation devices, we should examine the technology’s limitations. 

       The most obvious of these are the required raw materials and machine complexity. Most of us don’t have access to precious metals or expensive resources. Moreover, if you want to create something more complicated than metallic parts, plastic molds or ceramic shapes, the machine you use will be significantly more expensive. This isn’t an insurmountable hurdle, however, as it opens a marketplace for stores that are willing to facilitate the niche demands.

       A pop-up shop in Soho called MakerBot, for example, is offering customers the ability to print off customizable goods in store. Rows of colorful raw materials decorate the walls, while the futuristic machines take center stage on the store floor. This might be the future of the shopping experience: browse a digital catalogue on a computer screen, choose your materials and colors, then watch your creation come to life right before your eyes.

       Another application for the technology exists outside of commercial goods. Biomedical specialists at Wake and Cornell University are pursuing fascinating advancements in printing human organs and cartilage from raw biological materials. Although the viability of these might be a few more years down the line, the implications are a potential revolution in organ replacements, customized to each patient’s DNA. 

       There are some other, potentially dangerous, manifestations for the technology as well. If companies share digital designs for gun molds, people will be able to construct functioning pistols in their homes made of metal or ceramic. This would allow people to circumvent the registration process of in store purchases, and create problems for metal detectors incapable of sensing ceramic guns.

       Despite all the possibilities, no one actually knows what service model people really want with this technology. Venture capitalists have invested millions, but it is unclear whether the start-ups have a solid idea for how to make 3D printing real to the masses. We may very well be at the onset of a new industrial revolution, where cottage industries re-emerge and even bring manufacturing back to the American shores. Whatever the future holds for 3D technologies, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

Virtual Sex

       The pleasure center of the brain was discovered in a famous 1950s lab experiment utilizing rats. Two researches attached wires directly to certain regions of the rodent’s brain. The rats would then receive a current whenever they pressed down on a paddle in front of them. At the peak, some rats were pressing the paddle as much as seven-hundred times per hour. They ignored their food and sexual partners, eventually dying of exhaustion. These were the first instances of arousal addiction. 

       We are undergoing an interesting experiment ourselves. Since the late ’90s, every young male with internet access has been able to venture into the boundless world of online pornography (often before they’ve even begun to develop sexually.) Without a comparative control group - i.e. boys who don’t have internet access, it’s hard to know what changes this magnified convenience has had on the collective sexual psyche. Masturbation has always been a healthy and necessary part of sexual development, but humans have never had access to a limitless resource like the internet before. Just like the lab Rat’s paddle, our unending pleasure is just a few mouse-clicks away.

       We’ve learned from the rats, and general human behavior, that any activity which rewards the pleasure center does so by releasing the chemical Dopamine. This makes us want to repeat the behavior more frequently, and with greater potency. It’s why we eat ourselves into obesity, play video games for hours, measure our self worth in facebook likes and chain drink our coffee. When online pornography first rose to prominence, some worried it would lead to an increase in male aggression. They saw a danger in the unending novelty of internet porn, allowing more nudity to be seen than any of our ancestors could have fathomed. But in place of barbaric Hunters, docile Gatherers have thrived; voyeuristically enjoying a harem of fantasies collected through electronic windows. 

       Real courtship requires facing our anxieties, interacting in person, the rush of hormones, attraction, conversation, seduction, humor and confidence. If people begin to find that comparatively daunting to pressing a few buttons, we will probably continue to see rises in diagnosed depression, erectile dysfunction and social anxiety. A similarly modern social shift can be found in the online dating debate. Those in favor, advocate access to larger pools of partners, offering pairings that otherwise might never have occurred. The other side fears online dating has changed people’s perception of monogamy, turning meaningful courtships into a form of algorithmed virtual shopping.

       So is there an inherent harm in enjoying online pornography? The brain has always been elastic, and we change the circuitry with almost any repeated action. We avoid the dangers of fast moving cars, reward our work ethic with a sense of accomplishment and cultivate hobbies that give us joy. We are constantly learning, so why is our curiosity with virtual sex so different? It seems even for those among us who enjoyed open and honest discussions about sex growing up, online pornography still carries a stigma of shame. It’s been two decades…surely everyone is doing it by now, right? Watching online porn is a normalized activity, and yet we still seem uncomfortable discussing it for some reason.

       Let’s picture the average adolescent. Whatever they view online, generally tends to be divorced from the concepts of sex that teachers and parents explain to them. There is simply too much explicit vulgarity, uninhibited experimentation and shock value exhibitionism to be found online. What does a latex clad slave being whipped by an array of men in furry animal suits have to do with real intimacy or the creation of a family? As morbid curiosity sets in, more and more unseen novelties must be discovered. As a result, this isolated young mind creates a wall of shame between his online ventures and the reality of the world around. This has become a routine facet of modern sexual development.

       Millennials were exposed to this circus of erotic imagery at a young age, long before we ever began having sex. How would real intercourse compare with the deviant imagery embedded in our young neural pathways? Life doesn’t have a fast forward button to skip to favorite parts. It doesn’t offer a diversity of partners, costumes and toys with every sexual encounter (outside of Las Vegas.) Would all those long stored, hard wired fantasies rooted in our adolescent minds be a hindrance or a help? The answer is, of course, that no porn will ever compare to real sex. It is a fast and cheap imitation, of something passionately tactile and engagingly layered. 

       In the end, the habit of watching online porn seems less about nudity, sex, power or even lust, and more about ease of access. You don’t do it because you’re sexual drive is surging or you’re particularly horny, you do it because you’re bored and it’s available. Porn isn’t a drug, it’s junk food! We consume it even though we aren’t really hungry, and it might ruin our appetite. Just like junk food, it is comprised of the vulgar fundamentals of real food: sugar, salt and fat. We’d be terribly mistaken to confuse its easy comfort with nutritional value. Pornography itself has been around since our earliest civilizations, in every form of art and expression. But it’s undergone the same evolution as food, arriving at its most base manifestation. It is yet another temptation in which we should seek moderation, despite our drooling brain’s compulsive desire, lest we go the way of the exhausted rats.

The Foods of Tomorrow

       Our ancestors had two distinct food acquisition roles: Hunter and Gatherer. If the animals were scarce, fruits and vegetation would hold us over. For a time, that was all we needed to gain Nature’s bounty. But then we migrated, populated new territories, farmed crops and built cities. Any new life forms found in our travels were soon added to the menu. After the industrial revolution, as our global population exploded, there wasn’t an animal in the sky, sea or field that we hadn’t tasted. But mass consumption and extinction have claimed several species. Wildlife and farmed animals alike can no longer sustain human demand, there is little virgin land left open to agriculture, oceans are being overfished and futuristic super pills packed full of nutrients still seem out of our reach. So how will we feed the mouths of billions as our resources continue to grow scarce? 

       A scientifically intriguing suggestion that often comes up isSynthetic Meat, also known as Lab Meat. Before we come to understand the process, we should speculate its necessity. China and India both have a large emerging middle class. When GDP goes up, so does demand for meat and a westernized diet. Raising cattle requires an exorbitant amount of water, food and fuel. Approximately 100 pounds of inefficient resources go towards producing 15 pounds of edible meat. Alternatively, the process of developing synthetic meat involves very few cells being cultivated into large portions within a lab. Specialized proteins applied to these base muscle cells help them grow and duplicate. One animal’s cells could realistically provide millions of pounds of in vitro meat, in turn feeding the world’s population. If brought to market and made commercially viable, synthetic meat would produce 90% fewer greenhouse gases than farm raised meat, use 99% less land and require 85-90% less water usage. Compared to an agriculture that is fast becoming too expensive for consumers to support, synthetics might very well be the best economic option. 

       But food is also about taste! The biggest hurdle artificial meat faces is the lack of blood and fat cells that give meat its unique flavor. Many animal rights activists will be happy to know that lab meat is never connected to a brain, nervous system or any form of consciousness, but the catch is that the muscles produced never exercise or gain that natural leanness found in active creatures. If the progress of the technology keeps accelerating at its current pace, perhaps we can address these issues and make a viable, inexpensive supermarket product.

       It’s worth noting, that a cluster of new and intriguing ethical issues arise with this technology. For instance, will it potentially end the farming culture in America altogether? Would it be morally problematic if people wanted to eat human flesh produced in this manner?  If this cannibal cuisine trend arose, would celebrities sell their skin samples as a luxury food? What sudden biodiversity affects could occur, if most of the land and animals return to a “wild” un-farmed state? Most importantly, because In-Vitro meat has yet to be placed on the market, what are the potential health risks we need to investigate? 

       It’s apparent that many issues have yet to be addressed, and demands for new food might arrive sooner than we’re ready to answer them. So what are the formidable contenders to synthetic meat that could theoretically fill the void?

Algae seems to be a sensible candidate. The single-cell organisms can grow very rapidly at sea. The bio-fuel produced from Algae already has shipping and airline companies looking into the viability of algae oil. Algae farms could produce up to 10,000 gallons of ethanol biofuel per acre, compared to 350 gallons from maize. Its energy uses aside, algae can also act as a fertilizer. Kelps fix CO2 in the atmosphere and provide sugars, oils and fats. Algae may hold a rather low rank on the food chain, but China and Japan already widely consume it in the form of seaweeds, and animals of all sizes from shrimp to blue whales eat it regularly. The hurdle seems to be in diversifying the culinary styles in which we might enjoy it. As soon as a few trendy restaurants cultivate Algae based specials on their menus, we may see a new kind of green revolution.

Leaving no stone unturned, we can’t forget the obvious option: Insects! The human population is easily dwarfed by insects, both in biomass and numbers. Eating insects, or Entomophagy, is already widely practiced across the world (Mexico has a popular Grasshopper taco.) Spiders, worms, ants and beetles are eaten across Latin America, Asia and Africa. Compared to our current livestock, insect farms require far less land, are far more efficient at converting plants into edible meat and emit fewer greenhouse gases. They are rich in proteins, low in fat and high in calcium and iron. They can even flourish on waste and paper, offering an auxiliary cleaning service. The ants crawling all over your picnic may soon become the main course themselves.

       There are many new horizons available to us, but we should learn from the blunders we’ve made in the last century when it comes to modifying nature. For every step towards progress, we’ve suffered new dangers as well. Antibiotics kill most bacteria, only leaving the strongest and most resistant to come back in a wave of powerful vengeance. Hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crops helped us feed millions of starving people in drought stricken lands. But now the weeds have cross bred with the crops, and have become resistant to herbicides of ever increasing potency. We’re poisoning the soil and water supplies, and cannot afford to fell more forests for new farmland. The genetic modification lobby continues to promise fruits infused with vaccines, rapidly maturing animals and more efficient crops, but it might be wiser to stop combating nature and instead separate our experimentations from it. 

       Zhikang Li is a Chinese plant breeder, who has spent years working with his team to produce “green super rice”. His rice produces more grain, is more resistant to droughts, floods, salty water, insects and disease and was created without any GM technology. He took the natural route, working with hundreds of farmers and researchers in several countries to cross-breed more than 250 plants into his bountiful creation. This is the way we should be interacting with nature.

       Meanwhile our lab meat, insect cuisine and algae productions might be better suited in isolated Vertical Farms, encased laboratories and modernized greenhouses. Controlled environments can offer us less exposure to chemicals, pesticides and toxins. We can create a firewall between the “natural” world food supply, and our scientific efforts. That way, much like the Hunters and Gatherers of old, we’ll have two separate and equally important sources of food we can rely on!