While the technology isn’t nearly as versatile or as user-friendly as the science fiction dream, the implications include the potential to provide the things we need in much greener, less-centralized, less resource-intensive way. But, as with any new technology, there are also potential negative effects to balance the scales. Over the long run, the human imagination will no doubt concoct new uses that appear grotesque to us now but may make sense as the technology becomes ubiquitous and famiiar.

In short: as with so many human inventions, the future of 3D printing includes the good, the bad and the grotesque.

The Good

3D printing actually refers to a range of different technologies for making a three-dimensional object from a digital file. First, the dimensions and details of the object must be drafted out in CAD (computer-aided design) software. The CAD file provides the directions by which the machine builds the object, laying down molecules layer by layer and line by line much like an inkjet printer. How the machine prints the object depends on the type of technology used by the manufacturer.

The first rapid prototyping machine using 3D printing technology went into commercial use in 1986. Since then, the machines have become ubiquitous in commercial manufacturing shops. At first, they enabled companies to more quickly produce plastic prototypes on site, but the real benefit has come from their expanded use as additive manufacturing machines—a product can be manufactured by adding resources rather than the conventional way of subtracting from a larger hunk of material by grinding, drilling, sanding, etc.

Thanks to the ability to build a product from the bottom up, 3D printers can print shapes that cannot be viably manufactured any other way. For example, Airbus is using 3D printers to make airplane parts lighter—allowing the plane to use less fuel—without sacrificing strength and safety. People with missing limbs can have custom prosthetics 3D printed to their personal shape, capability and style.

3D printing also means significantly less waste. Traditional forms of machining often leave up to 90 percent of a slab of metal on the machine shop floor, but additive manufacturing generates far less waste in the first place, and also makes it easier to reuse anything that’s left over. The machines are also the ultimate expression of “just-in-time” manufacturing: a company can manufacture a needed part instantly, right on the spot, rather than depend on the old system that required parts to be manufactured in mass quantities, stored in massive warehouses and shipped to far-flung locations.

To further lower the resource footprint on our products, some researchers are working on attaching recycling machines to allow manufacturers and hobbyists to reduce their ordering of raw injection materials which they have to order from somewhere else. When 3D printers are ready to saturate the home-use market, they may provide an almost fully self-contained system. When printed items break or need replacement, home users could simply recycle them into the machine, creating a cradle-to-cradle system—the Holy Grail for recycling advocates.

The primary costs are in the machine itself and in the consumables or injection materials. Which injection material your home machine uses depends on the company, the type of printer you have, and which material you want to make your item from. 3D printers are able to manufacture items from various plastics and metals as well as glass, wood, food and even living cells. Most of the cheaper machines are limited to plastic, but many will function with more than one type of plastic.

Consumers are also able to order 3D printed items online, and 3D printer shops similar to Kinkos are opening in local neighborhoods for a faster turnaround. You can find or buy the CAD file for your desired item on the Web, download it, send it to your local print shop, and then go pick up the item in a few hours. These companies grant consumers and small businesses all the benefit of custom additive manufacturing without the hassle of learning CAD (computer-aided design) and handling a machine that may pose potential dangers such as toxic fumes or exposed moving parts. Some of the cheaper machines rely on consumer wisdom — in the loosest sense of the word — to allow ventilation and to avoid touching exposed areas.

The range of items we can self-manufacture this way is as limitless as the ingenuity of the Web. Simply hop online, find an appropriate CAD design and print it from your printer—et voila, you have the means to make a lamp out of your grandmother’s old cane. Or print out a set of Legos for your kids, new food containers, custom iPhone covers, and any other practical plastic curiosity that your household needs.

If home-based 3D printing takes off and goes prime-time, online stores and large mass manufacturers will almost certainly find their business models threatened as digital technology again forces a massive change to retail business models. The mall and the factory — the cornerstones of American consumer culture — will both find themselves increasingly irrelevant.

The Bad

No matter how awesome the potential may be for any technology, a downside is always waiting to rear its ugly head. John Smart points out in his Fourth Law of Technology that the first generation of a new technology is almost always more dehumanizing than it is beneficial — and 3D printing is unlikely to be an exception. Never underestimate the ingenuity humans will bring to apply any new technology to their worst impulses. Consider how the Internet has served the causes of racism, sexism and kittie porn (those lol-cats drive me up the wall!).

The Internet liberated people to say things online that they would not say in public — and find like-minded people who confirmed those views. Now, all those same scary people isolated in their homes and addicted to trolling can make 3D objects of mischief in any size, shape and color their twisted imaginations can conjure.

Paramount Studios recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to someone who posted designs for a toy that was a licensed item based on one of the studio’s movies. Lawyers are going to get rich writing those letters in the near term, but in the longer term, it’s going to be hard to stop anyone from posting downloadable designs on the Internet for home 3D printers to create any novelty they choose. The same concerns over intellectual property the music industry has been whining about for more than a decade are now about to be visited on manufactured goods as well.

And some of those objects will be dangerous. Weapons like knives or clubs can be printed in any shape and practicable material. In some US states, every part of the AR-15, a popular firearm, can be purchased without a license except for the lower receiver. Recently the design for the lower receiver was posted on Thingiverse, a Web site where users share 3D printer design files. That last part can now be printed in the privacy of an individual’s home, license free. Some are arguing about whether the plastic lower receiver is good enough to be functional, but the larger point is clear: assuming the design works, any 3D printer that can handle metal or polymers can privately print out the necessary part for a functional, unregistered gun.

While homemade firearms are nothing new—and usually legal in most US states—3D printing could make it easier to create them, and thus ensure that we’ll have many, many more of them in circulation. Regardless of your views about the US Constitution and the right to bear arms, this could eventually place an arsenal of untraceable guns in the hands of people who would not be able to legally buy them. Plus, America’s gun violence will be easy to export—right over the Internet—to other countries that have stricter gun ownership regulations.

Printing items covered by intellectual property law poses legal and financial as well as security concerns. In Texas, a small band of thieves used a 3D printer to make an ATM card scanner which they installed in ATMs around their city. They then stole about $400,000 before being caught. Also, i.Materialise, an online 3D printing service, reports that a customer attempted to pass a design for an ATM scanner through their service. They say the design was rejected, but they still receive searches for ATM scanners on their Web site indicating that criminals are hoping to enter the black market enabled by 3D printing.

The Texas thieves paid for their crimes, but future criminals might not. A member of a German recreational lock-picking club designed a key to Dutch handcuffs just by looking at a photo he took of an officer’s key being worn by the police officer. (That’s right! He built a key just by looking at a photo.) He then printed a copy to prove it worked, and posted the new design online. Dutch police have not reported the use of a 3D printed key, but if a recreational club member can do it, certainly real criminals can too.

3D printing even has the potential to completely undermine the war on drugs. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a system that would print the necessary lab equipment to create pharmaceuticals. While this kind of technology has the potential to democratize the pharmaceutical industry, it might also enable people to print illegal narcotics from home in a way that’s far safer and less detectable than a garage-based meth lab. It also means that the drugs people buy could become more dangerous than they are now, with black marketeers experimenting constantly with new substances and treating their customers as guinea pigs.

The Grotesque

3D printing is about more than just making fake plastic trees. It represents a new paradigm, additive manufacturing, which is a complete revolution in thinking about how we create many of the common objects that surround us and support our lives.

For instance, researchers at Wake Forest University are using the technology to print new skin directly onto a burn wound. They scan a burn victim’s wound into a computer, which in turn creates a 3D image with the exact size and shape of the wound. The printer then prints new layers of cells—using skin instead of ink—directly onto the lesion. Developed for US troops in Afghanistan, the whole process takes only an hour.

3D bioprinting research could eventually lead to the printing of organs ready for implantation. That would mean no more waiting lists for organs and no more age restrictions on said organs. The organ donation system might be left to the lower classes as the wealthy take advantage of all kinds of new transhumanist life-extension techniques, replacing everything from faces to eyeballs to livers as they wear out due to age.

And here’s where it gets really weird. What if the long-term future for 3D bioprinting converged with some of the stranger aspects of transhumanism? Could additive manufacturing turn into additive biohacking? Instead of taking away from one body and giving it to another like organ transplants do, bioprinting new organs could change how society thinks about implants. The cyborg visions of using digital technology to enhance our bodies could become reality as people use bioprinted body parts—as well as other biological means—to heighten their existing abilities.

We’re already heading down this path: people are already implanting magnets in their wrists and RFIDs in their arms. Rahel Aima suggests that some people may eventually want an extra ear, or a second set of eyes placed on the sides of their heads to give them full 360-degree vision. If someone, for reasons we can’t fathom right now, decided they wanted a third eye on their forehead or a third arm growing from their back, they could have it. The ethics will be moot once 3D bioprinting can enable the creation of fresh body parts.

As with any cultural postulations about the future, the idea of bioprinting extra arms to implant them on a presumably sane person sounds ridiculous—until you look at the dozens of women who are already beautiful but who would prefer to look like circus freaks with abnormally plump lips, button noses and shiny skin. A quick glance in any celebrity tabloid will provide dozens of prime examples of men and women of almost any age who look like plastic mannequins. (And let’s not get into the whys and wheres and hows of people’s tattoo and piercing choices.) If you doubt whether anyone will be brave enough to attempt a grotesque fashion statement using 3D bioprinted body parts, just ask Cat Man, Dennis Avner, who has augmented his face to look like that of a tiger. However, unlike Cat Man’s augmentations, the implanted 3D printed body parts could actually be useful.

As robotics and automation increase over the years, more people may try to get an edge in the job market with specific augmentations that will enable them to perform certain unique tasks. If the human body can adjust to a third or fourth arm, data entry professionals could become more efficient by drinking water with their third hand while the other two continue typing. Lumberjacks could more easily climb trees with their tools in hand. Companies may even offer to pay for the operation if the employee is willing to sign a five- or 10-year contract. Plus, the military would likely be interested in enabling its soldiers to hold more guns or fight in hand-to-hand combat more effectively.

Society is certainly not ready for such extreme body modification yet, but it’s not hard to imagine people asking for some very bizarre cosmetic or utilitarian augmentations once doctors start implanting 3D printed organs.

3D printing has already revolutionized several industries from toys to airlines, and that revolution is now about to come home. Along with all the clear economic and environmental benefits this technology will bring, it also presents some very challenging implications for how we look at shopping, security, health, and just about everything else.

While the ramifications of any new technology can never be fully gamed out ahead of time, it’s time to get ready for the next wholesale technology shift that will upend our economy and reprint the basic order of our lives. As the technology improves and progresses, we might even see the shopaholics converge with hoarders, and we may then marvel at the tragic lives of the printerholics who live in a sandbox of 3D printed trinkets — and just can’t stop spending their days printing.

Dennis D. Draeger is a foresight researcher with AFR, and a freelance writer on technology and its social implications. Follow him at Ad Futura and at @dddraeger on Twitter.

As geeky as this may sound, it turns out that the problems inherent in making robot fish yield some of humanity’s deepest questions: How did we get here? What (and where) is thought? How much can we trust the symbols (words, images, digital signals) that dominate our lives? Long’s new book, “Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology,” is part Descartes, part MacGyver and part Douglas Adams, turning from rumination on the possibility of intelligence residing in a brainless body to tips on making artificial fish vertebrae out of coffee stirrers to the dopey yet endearing jokes that seem to flourish in laboratories all over the world.

Long works in a field called biorobotics, which builds physical devices to test hypotheses about animal behavior, rather than studying either the animal itself or digital models. Sometimes an animal can’t be studied for logistical reasons: marlins, for example, die in captivity and plesiosaurs are extinct. Computer models allow scientists to simulate complex, unreproducible conditions — say, the modeling of 10,000 generations of a particular organism — but as abstractions, they are prone to certain errors.

Robots, as Long explains, have their peculiar virtues. Long himself once created an impressive computer model illustrating how the marlin’s backbone helped the fish achieve its awe-inspiring swimming and leaping speeds, only to have a revered elder scientist note, “it appears to me that you’ve created a perpetual motion machine.” Robots, as Long points out, can’t violate the laws of physics. Instead of operating in a simulation of a physics-compliant environment, robots simply exist in the real universe, and must therefore play by the rules as a matter of course. At the same time, robots can be simplified to the degree that certain characteristics can be observed in isolation.

The main thing Long uses his robots to study is evolution. His first robot-fish experiment involved creating a bunch of large, tadpole-like “Evolvabots” designed to do one thing: swim toward a light source. With his team of students and fellow scientists — Long makes a point of mentioning the names of everyone who made significant contributions to his projects, a big departure from spotlight-hogging senior-scientist tradition — he rated their success at this imitation of “food-seeking” behavior. The robots (called Tadros) were given tails of varying degrees of stiffness and length and were then “mated” (algorithmically) over several generations to see if this would lead to selection for certain kinds of tails. The hypothesis Long and his colleagues wanted to test was that primeval invertebrates evolved backbones because it improved their ability to feed.

The experiment didn’t work out as they’d hoped, mostly because, in designing the experiment, the scientists had failed to fully appreciate a factor called wobble. One of the most intriguing and important aspects of “Darwin’s Devices” is the way it places the reader in the lab, at the shoulder of people doing hands-on science, sharing in their frustrations (over disappointing data, recalcitrant grant committees and astutely critical colleagues), their successes and their failures. And Long does this so lucidly that you find yourself caught up in the process, grasping the basics and eager to learn the results. It’s the best depiction of how science really works that I’ve ever read.

“Darwin’s Devices” could also administer a chastening rebuke to the many laypeople who talk and think sloppily about evolution. Determining exactly how growing a backbone helped ancient invertebrates thrive might seem superfluous to the quick-and-dirty school of cocktail-party Darwinism. Obviously, backbones helped because otherwise vertebrate animals would never have evolved. But as “Darwin’s Devices” illustrates, we can easily mistake the reasons for the evolution of certain traits by jumping to what seem like “logical” conclusions, and natural selection is not the only evolutionary pressure applied to a species. There are times when you just have to build something to understand how it works.

For example, the next type of robot Long and his colleagues developed they named Madeleine (because it is shaped, roughly, like the little French cakes). Madeleine had four paddles at each corner of its body, much like the extinct plesiosaur, a marine reptile. This creature was a tetrapod: a sea-dwelling animal descended from land-dwelling ancestors. Living aquatic tetrapods include whales, dolphins and sea otters, but “none of the living aquatic tetrapods ever use all four appendages to swim underwater — they only use two.” With Madeleine, the researchers hoped to figure out why this is so, since “it sure seemed like using four flippers for propulsion should be better in almost any way imaginable.”

It isn’t, actually, and that launched yet another branch of inquiry about why the plesiosaur used four flippers at all. If it’s that easy for legitimate scientists to be mistaken about something as seemingly simple as four-flippered locomotion, you can see why so many of them regard popular but highly speculative pastimes like evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience.

One party who has found the activities of Long and his robotics lab keenly interesting is the U.S. government. It’s not a big leap from “robot fish” to the notion of defense applications, and Long, despite a youthful infatuation with all things military, finds this troubling. But not that troubling! After a bit of hemming and hawing about it — noting that, if over 50 nations are pursuing military robot research, then American scientists can’t afford to opt out — he plunges into rampant (and, I must say, fascinating) theorizing about what sorts of robots would work best in battle. They need to be complex enough to cope with contingencies, but simple (i.e., cheap) enough that commanders aren’t afraid to burn through them.

Long ends with these cautionary words: “The reality is that evolving robots are and will be created for academic, industrial and military purposes. This means that we should all become students of robots of any kind, whether they be evolving robots, nonevolving autonomous robots, or semiautonomous and remotely controlled military robots. We need to understand robots so we can proceed with due caution and deliberation.” Yikes! And probably true. “Darwin’s Devices” will get some of us, at least, a little closer.

Hey, we always knew that associate professors were the best at something. And that something is being very, very creepy (and goatee’d).

How long until we can get Christian Bale fighting against one of these guys in “Terminator: Salvation,” instead of an underpaid photography director? While the Geminoid DK is not as…uh…sexy (?) as its female brothers and sisters, it may be the most realistic A.I. ever created. (Barring of course, Al Pacino’s creation in “Simone” or Kelly LeBrock in “Weird Science.”) And being too realistic to be attractive would fit perfectly into science’s concept of the uncanny valley, which will now only be explained in terms of “Star Wars” and pornography, thanks to an episode of “30 Rock.”

Those unfamiliar with the concept of uncanny valley can refer to this handy chart by Karl F. MacDorman and Takashi Minato in Android Science:

Basically: If a robot or alien or any non-human looks vaguely humanish, it can be cute/sexy/totally fine. But get too close to human resemblance without being 100 percent man-droid, and our “familiarity” (i.e. sexual attraction) with the entity takes a sharp plummet.

However, this chart may be confusing to some people, in that it puts zombies down as the most uncomfortable human-like comparison for people to deal with, when we all know that children zombies are adorable and heart-wrenching.

So I pose this question to you, readers: What creeps you out more? A child zombie a la “Dead Island,” or the robot version of a Danish associate professor with distinctly European facial hair?

The eye tracker works by shining two invisible infrared lights at you. Two hidden cameras then look for the “glints” off your eyeballs and reflections from each retina. It needs to be calibrated for each person. It works for people with or without eyeglasses.

Rather than a replacement for the traditional mouse and keyboard or the newer touch screen, the eye-tracking could be a complement, making a computer faster and more efficient to use, said Barbara Barclay, general manager of Tobii’s Analysis Solutions business.

Tobii has been making eye-tracking devices for researchers and the disabled for nearly a decade. The laptop is its way of showing that eye-tracking could expand beyond those niches, Barclay said, calling it an “idea generator.”

The laptop is made by Lenovo Corp., and incorporates Tobii’s eye-tracking cameras in a “hump” on the cover, making the entire package about twice as thick as a regular laptop. But future, commercial versions can be slimmer and are perhaps two years away, Barclay said.

Lenovo and Tobii made 20 of the laptops and planned to demonstrate them at the CeBIT technology trade show in Hanover, Germany, on Tuesday.

Tobii’s current, standalone eye-trackers cost tens of thousands of dollars, but Barclay said the cost of adding consumer-level eye-tracking to a commercial laptop could be much less.

New ways to use computers have been proliferating in recent years. Touch screens are becoming popular on smart phones and tablet computers such as the iPad. Nintendo Corp.’s Wii game console brought motion-sensing technology to the masses. Microsoft Corp. released an accessory for its Xbox games console last year that uses an infrared camera to sense the movement of bodies in three dimensions.

This follows on the heels of a UK judge bizarrely banning a 41-year-old man with a low IQ from having sex, and both cases have disability activists up in arms and tap into the long history of involuntary sterilization. Salon spoke with Doug Pet, senior program associate at the Center for Genetics and Society, a non-profit devoted to encouraging responsible use of reproductive technologies, in an attempt to untangle the complicated ethical issues raised by such rulings. 

What do you make of this latest case in the U.K.?

It sends up a lot of red flags, and it’s very drastic. There have been reports saying that she’s healthy and sexually active, which raises the question of whether there are less invasive measures that could be taken. The idea of coerced sterilization puts it in this very problematic context of eugenic history in which things are framed as being in the best interest of marginal or vulnerable populations, when in reality they’re really being used to further some larger social goal. It really raises the question of whether this is really in the best interest of the woman.

How unusual is a case like this?

A case where it is being put into play by a court, that is something that is increasingly rare these days — not to say that it doesn’t happen, and not to say that it doesn’t happen outside of the courts. There have been lots of allegations of hospitals or doctors acting on their own and sterilizing women without their knowledge or against their will. Certain states, including Indiana and North Carolina have made public apologies about how horrendous these state-sponsored eugenic programs were.

Is it ever appropriate to sterilize someone who is considered legally incapable of consenting to the procedure?

That’s a very difficult question. Usually these decisions have a very strong social undertone. If the goal is un-complicating the outcomes of this person procreating — and the burden it puts on their caretaker — then it’s really never appropriate. But in this case, the medical side of it hasn’t been made clear. They haven’t discussed what the medical justification is; they haven’t talked about why a less invasive procedure should be dismissed as a course of action.

Is there a consensus in the medical community about sterilizing mentally disabled people?

Forced sterilization as a medically recognized practice was really ousted in the 70s. Since then public knowledge of these programs — the tens of thousands of people who were possibly sterilized — has grown. Looking back on those programs, doctors, social commenters and disability activists really look at it as an atrocity. I would say that there is a consensus that it really is an unethical practice.

What if this woman was instead given a long-term but impermanent form of contraception like an IUD?

It would be very appropriate to look into alternatives like an IUD. More generally, though, if public policy appropriates forcible sterilization as an appropriate procedure, we really enter this slippery slope of deciding who is fit to reproduce and who isn’t. At the same time that we’re seeing a court in the UK say that this might be appropriate, we’re also seeing other governments in Canada and throughout the U.S. that are starting to look at how sterilization has been used in state-sponsored social programs in the past to commit some really horrible atrocities.

We see forced sterilization a lot more often with women than with men, right?

Yes, you could definitely say that. The iconic stories about this come with the heyday of the American eugenic movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Poor Black women in the south often underwent procedures that were popularized as the “Mississippi appendectomies.” A lot of women in their teens or pre-teens would go in to the doctor and they were told they were getting an appendectomy or having their tonsils out. They had been determined to be feeble-minded, they had a low IQ or were in some way socially problematic. They weren’t told that they were being sterilized and many of them didn’t discover it until decades later.

These cases raise a fundamental question: Should sex and reproduction be considered fundamental human rights?

Those are two different questions. I think it’s important to concentrate on the concept of reproduction because it has implications that go beyond just one generation or one human life and has to do with who will be composing our society and who will have the right to pass along their genes, and everyone should. Reproduction in a sense really isn’t something that should be legislated based on social norms because, if you look at the history, it has opened up the door to determining who is more fit or less fit to reproduce. It’s led to some of the biggest catastrophes in our history.