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praxis22's avatar

Neil Stephenson's book, "The diamond age" is a great description of this in action. For a more up to date take Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" is even better. Both are broadly SciFi Novels btw.

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Matt Stoller's avatar

In terms of right to repair, this comment to the Federal Trade Commission by two officers at the Pentagon is an interesting aspect of the problem. It doesn't entirely cohere with 3D printing but it's another area where IP will significant impact the physical nature of our world.

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FTC-2019-0013-0074

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Michael's avatar

I keep waiting for 3D printing to really take off, but it always seems to be just on the periphery.

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Azeem Azhar's avatar

It is already a multibillion-dollar business globally. Small, to be sure but really in action.

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Michael's avatar

Reading Chris Anderson’s book and watching the documentary about Makers you start to believe the hype of a 3D printer in every home like the PC. I guess we’ll get there eventually.

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Azeem Azhar's avatar

They are taking off in industrial contexts, rather than at home. A couple of the reports I link to cover that. Chris used to be my next door neighbour - and colleague back in the 90s.

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Jose Antony's avatar

Mass Customisation could really begin to happen soon enough and then it will be all around 3D printing.

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al@pitt.edu's avatar

Thought-provoking! But, if all value is flowing through the Internet, tax needs will force even more government control of Internet transmissions. In the end, the IP will be taxed on use locally, and a by-product may be more censorship by governments with more incentives to monitor information flow.

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Azeem Azhar's avatar

Yes, that is certainly one scenario.

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Paul C.'s avatar

Just came across this fascinating article on dematerialization: https://reason.com/2019/10/09/the-economy-keeps-growing-but-americans-are-using-less-steel-paper-fertilizer-and-energy/

It appears that we’re beyond “peak commodity” in the US for almost all commodities. What’s more consumption of a number of key commodities has been decreasing for decades even though the economy keeps growing.

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Michael Falk's avatar

Thanks Paul. Interesting! I wonder if we should complement all this future "stuff" with something really old. You write dematerialization and I complement it with the happiness that comes from "not wanting" (Buddhism)

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Paul C.'s avatar

I'd like to think you're right but IMO it's another symptom of the rise of the intangible economy. We still want lots of things, just not physical things as much :-)

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Juan Avellan's avatar

Ahh the opportunities that open up.... and the difficulty of having the right timing to enter the market: highly specialised IP protection services in a tax haven to anybody with just a couple of clicks! Regarding the scenario (highly likely) for IP owners to become centers of gravity, there's the counter scenario of IP development (and ownership) developing anywhere in the world (i.e. an atomised IP ownership) democratising revenue to the most creative, etc.. This assumes of course, that high quality IP protection services are available as a widely accessible service (i.e. at a reasonable price) levelling the playing field and not the asymmetry of organisations having high-powered legal/IP teams and costly IP filing costs.

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