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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

The human foot is a strong and complex mechanical structure containing 26 bones, 33 joints (20 of which are actively articulated), and more than a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

I suppose you are thinking "Why should I care, those Walmart sneakers fit me just fine" but if you had to pay podiatrist $400 for custom orthotics every year this article would get your attention.

TFA says the first applications are for elite athletes.

Pravda says this is potentially a way to free the poorest paid workers of the world from some of the most difficult repititious labour.

Isaac Asimov says in the future lots of things will be made this way.

What will all the people be doing in the future when all the work is done by machines? Some of them will be writing novels, and editing documentaries, about how the world used to be before robots.

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> What will all the people be doing in the future when all the work is done by machines?

There will be a lot of poor people with no income. That is not a recipe for a good ending.

You can use that line of reasoning for anything, like prostitution, hitmen, drug-dealers.. Work is not necessary for surviving really, we are just used to it for some centuries

Of itself, automated production is not a recipe. It is just a factor of production. Society could be organised a number of different ways, post-automation, just as it has been organised in various ways since the end of slavery (in some geographies and forms).

> The human foot is a strong and complex mechanical structure containing 26 bones, 33 joints (20 of which are actively articulated), and more than a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

And evolved to walk to walk barefoot.

> I suppose you are thinking "Why should I care, those Walmart sneakers fit me just fine"

No, I use comfortable quality shoes. But most feet aren't that unique that a massproduced shoe that conforms to them after a break in period wont fit them.

> Pravda says this is potentially a way to free the poorest paid workers of the world from some of the most difficult repititious labour.

Do you expect millions of low price shoes to be produced by specialized machines after taking a 3D scan of your foot?

> What will all the people be doing in the future when all the work is done by machines?

I don't have anything against machines or robots, just as I don't have anything against regular juice presses. You can automate those jobs with more conventional robots. Having custom shoes printed to order is not a realistic production method for the vast majority of shoes sold. When it comes to bespoke equipment for a handful of elite athletes or rich hobbyists anything goes of course, you can already buy 3D printed bike saddles and handle bars, but this is not the future of shoe manufacturing for the masses.

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