Off Topic - kinda

Went to a very cool amazing presentation from the CEO of Desktop Factory tonight and had an interesting discussion about 3d Printing and fablabs etc. It was part of the Hollywood Hill tech revolutionary series of presentations..

The fact that these things exist is amazing, and even more amazing is that some research teams are now creating 3d printers that can print biological structures.

During the Q&A, one of the first things that came up (and a point that began to cross my mind about 3 minutes into the presentation) was - "can't this technology be used to create weapons and how do you keep people from doing that."

One of the first offerings was a typical entertainment biz response "Well we should put hardware DRM on the machines." Which of course, would last about 2 days.

The reality of these amazing technologies that will, in our lifetime, allow anyone, anywhere to design and custom print or fabricate weapons. Be it a plastic gun that fires real projectiles that kill people, or be it a missile, or a drone with biological payloads - it will happen. It is unavoidable.

So the question becomes not one of solving the problem technologically, but one we must address and be proactive on sociologically.

How do we change our world and our place in it so that the vast majority of the world does not use these technologies to do bad things to others?

As disruptive as these technologies are for goods manufacturers (and they will be very disruptive!! YAY!), they will also be disruptive for societies and we will need to learn new ways of raising our children and our communities in a way that helps deter people from misusing these technologies.