Here we have a piece of technology achieving nothing short of miracles, saving people's lives.
And yet, I can't believe some idiots look at this technology and the best use case they think of is: "hey, this sounds awesome -- let's print guns!"
And yet, I can't believe some idiots look at this technology and the best use case they think of is: "hey, this sounds awesome -- let's print guns!"
What scares me are the people who are going to start foaming at the mouth to ban 3D printing because you could print a gun. I'm afraid our best-case scenario is "heavily regulated", so I fully support anything that democratizes the technology, even if it is just printing stupid chochskies.
Rocks: You can bash skulls or build cathedrals. Do both and we call it human.
We know media technology is led by the porn industry. Maybe physical technology is led by the weapons industry.
Just imagine when _stuff_ is like that. Expect some nasty things, but also expect cheap, easily reproducible miracles. I'd take that trade.
They probably see that 3D printers are too widespread and too economically game-changing to be banned, effectively at any rate, and thus that by showing how printers enable production of something, they can show that regulating that thing at the historical source is going to be ineffective.
I imagine these people are your allies more than you think.