Futurists always set the bar too high.
Is no one else let down to not have a jet pack at this point? Or a flying car? By now we should at least have holograms and a moon colony — I’m looking at you, Newt Gingrich.
Don’t fret. The future, as always, is on the horizon.
Enter the 3-D printer.
In a most Jetsons-esque fashion, you will soon be able to download and manufacture your own basic necessities.
What 3-D printers do is use renderings from a computer to actually build objects from the ground up, typically with plastic.
Thus far, 3-D printers have been used to build eyeglass frames, toys, concept models, prosthetic limbs and even spare parts for the 3-D printer itself — the latter of which, if you’ve seen any science-fiction film ever, is so scary that I choose to remain willfully ignorant.
These printers have existed since the ’80s, but as it goes with all advanced technology, they’re on the verge of availability to the masses.
While analysts claim the technology is less than a decade away from mass production and availability, the possibilities reside beyond our shortsighted imaginations.
And speculation is out as to what niche the everyman’s 3-D printer will fill.
As with nearly all things pleasurable, the revolution will be illegal. I guarantee it.
Think about mp3 players: When first launched, they were expensive, large and had little storage to warrant the bonus of no CDs skipping inside.
Enter Napster, the audiophile’s messiah and copyrighter’s kryptonite, and suddenly “mp3” is a household term. No one could anticipate the mass reaping of music to computer storage, nor the electronic market which proliferated in the wake.
It changed everything about the way we treat the Internet today, from torrent sites for textbooks to cell phones with music-streaming cloud services.
Imagine the capabilities of illegally downloading three-dimensional objects — cell-phone cases, rings, bracelets, sculptures, action figures and toys, guitar picks and anything your mind can communicate into a computer rendering.
Now imagine the possibilities when you factor in the ability to print in multiple materials — plastic, metal, ceramic, glass. This technology already exists.
Today’s futurists (with the appropriate grain of salt) predict downloadable, printable sneakers within the next two decades.
Copyright infringement will hit unfathomable heights, but this hasn’t hindered our progress in the past.
Torrent giant Pirate Bay was first to the party, adding a section called “Physibles” to its service, providing downloadable renderings for various objects.
Three-dimensional printing will go the same way music did when YouTube or Myspace was created.
Everyday aspiring musicians are posting cover tracks onto YouTube waiting for a big break. The prominent music group Beirut formed when the 16-year-old frontman Zach Condon wrote, recorded and posted his first album to Myspace.
Three-dimensional art will explode, and the Web will face a welcome flood of artistic material — free to download and recreate in homes everywhere.
The possibilities, for lack of a better term, are endless.
Students here at the University are already reaping the benefits of this technology, as majors in various fields may utilize the campus 3-D printer for various tasks.
Shiloh Meyers, mechanical engineering graduate student, described the immense satisfaction that comes with the ability to see final projects manifest in plastic.
We’re on the cusp of another technological revolution.
And the revolution, it turns out, will be printed in three dimensions.
Clayton Crockett is a 20-year-old international studies sophomore from Lafayette. Follow him on
Twitter @TDR_ccrockett.
 
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Contact Clayton Crockett at [email protected]