Attend the 3D Printshow in NYC, April 16-19

by Awl Sponsors

Next week, the world’s leading event for creative future-tech, 3D Printshow, returns to NYC for the second year running, showcasing the hottest tech and the latest innovations in the world of 3D printing and design.

If we’re to believe everything that we read online, you can 3D print cars, planes, robots, 3D-printers-that-print-other-3D-printers (I’m envisaging a Terminator 2-type doomsday scenario, but with a lot more plastic), pretty much anything.

Oh, and if we give credence to Will-I.am’s recent comments, we’ll be 3D printing entire human beings within his lifetime. I’m guessing he’ll probably do it on the holodeck of his nanotech-microbot-trans-warp-drive-powered-black-eyed-pea-scooter sometime within the next 2 months. Or not at all. Ever.

3D printing has suffered from a lot of hype, which seems to be detracting from the incredible things you can actually do with it right now.

Just as the smartphone, and indeed the internet before it, opened up entire new worlds of creativity, commerce and productivity (or time-wasting and perpetual work, depending on how you see it), 3D printing promises to change our world.

That sounds like a huge promise — as though it could make the world unrecognizable from the one that we now know. Is that level of change even possible through one technology? I believe it is.

For many of us it will change the way things are done on a fundamental level. It will open up a world of possibilities and enable a speed of creativity that’s most easily compared to the email vs. snail mail model (I mean how the hell did anyone get anything done when information took at least a day to travel in either direction??)

It will also spawn entire scenes, communities and business arenas that never existed before — that couldn’t have existed before.

3D Hubs is a good example — a community network of 3D printers that within two years has built up over 13,000 printers connecting one billion people within 10km of a 3D printer — that’s one for every seven people on the planet. If you need a print done, check on the website — they’ll connect you to your nearest 3D printer-owner and facilitate the file exchange. Pick up your print or have it posted. A new paradigm is born — a perfect system of distributed manufacturing.

It’s obvious that 3D printing is powerful and will generate change that cannot be undone, but we’re in an exciting phase where the lines aren’t clearly defined.

As new tech flourishes, the shape of how we fill the hours between waking and sleeping evolves. Future-gazers may have predicted the pocket computer (smartphone), but could anyone have foreseen the age / race / language / creed-spanning popularity of Angry Birds? Or the reporting of our every movement that so many people volunteer onto social media platforms?

3D printing may well change the world — it’s just not obvious yet what that change will look like. Everyone’s predictions are based on a curve that moves from the past, through today and maintains some sort of predictable trajectory.

But it doesn’t always work like that.

From the Beatles to the computer, cars to the internet, early signs were that they’d ‘never catch on’. Each did, and has reshaped the world that we live in today. Never mind food and shelter, Wi-Fi is considered a human right in certain circles.

How quickly the baseline moves up.

Just like the Beatles, 3D printing is starting to get ‘famous’ around the world. Need proof that 3D printing is going mainstream? Check out Disney’s latest animated feature, ‘Big Hero 6’. When the team of heroes need new armor, 3D scanning and 3D printing are, it would seem, the go-to tools for the creator of the near-future. I even spotted a 3D printer in Iron Man 3. Pop culture is starting to pick up on this stuff.

If all of this peaks your curiosity, 3D Printshow offers 3D-scanned selfies, insane bio/futurist art, a taste of 3D printed chocolate (Spoiler alert: It tastes like… Chocolate) and the (mildly hypnotic) sight of these machines building objects layer-by-layer. There is much for the creative New Yorker to marvel at.

For those with a head for business or a strong creative itch, the show’s conference series offers fast-track insight and advice across a range of 3D print topics, including investment, medical, newcomer, fashion and art.

Buy tickets to the 3D Printshow here.