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After the joy of the birth itself, parenthood sometimes brings the unwelcome news that a newborn has jaundice and must wear goggles and be placed under special lights. Imagine how different this experience might be if there were no goggles, just a warm blanket covering the tiny body, a healing frequency of blue light emanating from its folds.
That comforting scene, already a reality in some hospitals, is evidence of the fundamental rethinking of lighting now under way in research labs, executive offices and investor conferences. Digital revolutionaries have Edison’s 130-year-old industry, and its $100 billion in worldwide revenue, in their sights. Color, control and function are all being reassessed, and new players have emerged like a wave of Silicon Valley start-ups.
3D Printing (Additive Manufacturing) Is Turning the Impossible Into the Possible. What if you could deliver your product to your customer the moment it was manufactured? What if your customers could manufacture a replacement part whenever they need one? What if doctors could manufacture a body part, personalized for the individual patient, in the hospital at a moment's notice?
Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation, a major report from the McKinsey Global Institute, presents a clear view of how manufacturing contributes to the global economy today and how it will probably evolve over the coming decade.
Lately, it seems like nearly everything has been reproduced by a 3D printer. Between the group that 3D printed a gun, the people who printed a drone, and the army of items sold at this small marketplace for 3D printed goods, there are plenty of novelty uses for these suddenly trendy machines. We’re a long way from 3D printing a house, but it’s clear that the hobby is inching into the mainstream.
Yet it’s difficult not to wonder: at what point will 3D printing move beyond novelty to industry? Will these machines change the way we manufacture goods, and subsequently change the global economy, too? (Is it already happening before our very eyes?)
Every industrial revolution is spurred by a shift in both energy and communication technology. Author and economist Jeremy Rifkin says we are on the precipice of a Third Industrial Revolution combining renewable energy and the internet. He joins Piya Chattopadhyay to discuss the possibility of hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet."
Robots far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other industries are replacing workers in both manufacturing and distribution.
For an industry firmly entrenched in working with nails and screws, the prospects of replacing saws and hammers with giant printing machines seems frightening. But getting beyond this hesitancy lies the biggest construction boom in all history.
The introduction of robots to manufacturing, does not always spell job losses, a new research angle has pointed out. The Positive Impact of Industrial Robots, recently published by the International Federation of Robotics in Tokyo, argues that automation and robots have contributed to job creation. In addition to increasing productivity and efficiency, the study shows 3 million jobs have been directly created by the use of robots in recent years.
Jeremy Rifkin, the President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the creator of the Third Industrial Revolution, is an American economist, writer, public speaker and activist who seeks to shape public policy in the United States and globally. Jeremy Rifkin is the principal architect of the Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change.
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Harvesting space resources will raise living standards worldwide, without further damaging Earth. So how can those resources be tapped in a way that will produce a return on investment? That question may have been hypothetical in the past; now, it’s of pressing concern.
3D printing has already changed the game for manufacturing specialized products such as medical devices but the real revolution will come when designers start to rethink the shapes of objects.
Engineers and designers have been using 3D printing to create prototypes for many years, but falling technology costs are making it increasing accessible to other people. 3D objects are created by sending a digital file or scan to a printer which then builds the item layer by layer - a process know as "additive manufacturing". The range of objects the technology can manufacture is rapidly expanding - in the medical sector it is being used for dental work, while the fashion industry is experimenting with it to produce clothing.
Rory Cellan-Jones investigates how an increasing affordability in 3D-printing technology could change the way items are manufactured.
Economist Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The Third Industrial Revolution". According to Rifkin, industrial revolutions occur when new energy regimes emerge and new communications systems enable them to become operational. We are now entering a third industrial revolution, one which combines renewable energy and internet technology to transform the power grid.
What a privilege it is to be alive in these times, in such a significant period in human history. It’s not always easy to see moments of great historical importance when you’re in the middle of them. Sometimes they’re dramatic, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the landing on the moon. But more often the really big ones appear, from within them, to be unfolding in slow motion. Their actual drama and speed then only becomes clear in hindsight. That’s how it will be with this. But in the end we’ll look back at this moment and say, yes, that’s when it was clear, that’s when the end game began. The end game of the industrial revolution.
From the year 2000 to 2010 the number of manufacturing jobs in America fell by about a third. The rise of outsourcing and offshoring and the growth of sophisticated supply chains has enabled companies the world over to use China, India and other lower-wage countries as workshops. Now, the global financial crisis has people thinking it is time their countries returned to making stuff in order to create jobs and prevent more manufacturing skills from being lost. These factors, and technologies like robotics, 3D printing and artificial intelligence could help bring about a Third Industrial Revolution.
Join Jeremy Rifkin as he describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses and millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct business, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life. Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the bestselling author of nineteen books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. His books have been translated into more than thirty five languages and are used in hundreds of universities, corporations and government agencies around the world. His most recent books includeThe Third Industrial Revolution, The Empathic Civilization, The Hydrogen Economy, The European Dream, The End of Work, The Age of Access, and The Biotech Century. http://www.foet.org/
Hod Lipson of Cornell University discusses the future of 3-D printing in his lecture entitled, Programmable Matter: The Shape of Things to Come
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Pleasing and forward progress, a good combination