Computed·Blg

Via pcworld

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On Friday, Microsoft released its 3D Builder app, which allows Windows 8.1 users to print 3D objects, but not much else.

The simple, simplistic, free app from Microsoft provides a basic way to print common 3D objects, as well as to import other files from SkyDrive or elsewhere. But the degree of customization that the app allows is small, so 3D Builder basically serves as an introduction to the world of 3D printing.

In fact, that’s Microsoft’s intention, with demonstrations of the MakerBot Replicator 2 slated for Microsoft’s retails stores this weekend. Microsoft customers can buy a new Windows 8.1 PC, as well as the $2199 MakerBot Replicator 2, both online as well as in the brick-and-mortar stores themselves.

One of the selling points of Windows 8.1 was its ability to print 3D objects, a complement to traditional paper printing. Although Microsoft is pitching 3D Builder as a consumer app, the bulk of spending on 3D printing will come from businesses, which will account for $325 million out of the $415 million that will be spent this year on 3D printing, according to an October report from Gartner. However, 3D printers have made their way into Staples, and MakerBot latched onto an endorsement of the technology from President Obama during his State of the Union address, recently encouraging U.S. citizens to crowd-fund an effort to 3D printers in every high school in America. (MakerBot also announced a Windows 8.1 software driver on Thursday.)

Microsoft

Microsoft’s 3D Builder app could certainly be a part of that effort. Frankly, there’s little to the app itself besides a library of pre-selected objects, most of which seem to be built around small, unpowered model trains of the “Thomas the Tank Engine” variety. After selecting one, the user has the option of moving it around a 3D space, increasing or decreasing the size to a particular width or height—and not much else.

Users can also import models made elsewhere. Again, however, 3D Builder isn’t really designed to modify the designs. It’s also not clear which 3D formats are supported.

On the other hand, some might be turned off by the perceived complexity of 3D printing. If you have two grand to spend on a 3D printer but aren’t really sure how to use it, 3D Builder might be a good place to start.

Via Computer History Museum

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In June 1977 Apple Computer shipped their first mass-market computer:
the Apple II.

Unlike the Apple I, the Apple II was fully assembled and ready to use with any display monitor. The version with 4K of memory cost $1298. It had color, graphics, sound, expansion slots, game paddles, and a built-in BASIC programming language.

What it didn’t have was a disk drive. Programs and data had to be saved and loaded from cassette tape recorders, which were slow and unreliable. The problem was that disks – even floppy disks – needed both expensive hardware controllers and complex software.

Steve Wozniak solved the first problem. He designed an incredibly clever floppy disk controller using only 8 integrated circuits, by doing in programmed logic what other controllers did with hardware.  With some rudimentary software written by Woz and Randy Wigginton, it was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1978.

But where were they going to get the higher-level software to organize and access programs and data on the disk? Apple only had about 15 employees, and none of them had both the skills and the time to work on it.

The magician who pulled that rabbit out of the hat was Paul Laughton, a contract programmer for Shepardson Microsystems, which was located in the same Cupertino office park as Apple.

On April 10, 1978 Bob Shepardson and Steve Jobs signed a $13,000 one-page contract for a file manager, a BASIC interface, and utilities. It specified that “Delivery will be May 15?, which was incredibly aggressive. But, amazingly, “Apple II DOS version 3.1? was released in June 1978.

With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the DigiBarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use. This material is Copyright © 1978 Apple Inc., and may not be reproduced without permission from Apple.

There are seven files in this release that may be downloaded by clicking the hyperlinked filename on the left:

Via pcworld

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Via geek.com

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Probably the single most troubling thing about the inescapable advance of technological obsolescence is the rate at which old devices are being thrown out. It’s not just the landfills full of last year’s superphone, nor the rare Earth elements we’re mining at incredible speeds, but the sheer, simple waste of it, as well.

But what if electronics were designed on the molecular level to be biodegradable? What if recycling a phone was as simple as buying a small bottle of solvent and leaving the phone for several hours? What if you could pour out your old iPhone and return the insoluble metals left over for a discount on your next handset?

That’s one of the many possible uses for a new technology that could see integrated circuits built on soluble chips, along with many of the other pieces they require. Professor John A. Rogers and his team of researchers at the University of Illinois have made significant progress in the field, and they have a lot of ideas about how it might change the world.

Beyond the applications for recycling, the team sees biomedical science as a major application. Currently, inserting foreign technology is difficult not just in the implantation, but in the extraction as well; many pieces of technology are simply left inside a patient, since that often ends up being less dangerous than an additional surgery. This research could lead to a future for implanted technology in which implants simply melt away into the blood-stream, either as a slow, natural reaction beginning at the moment of insertion or as a catalyzed reaction begun by an injected agent.

In either case, the ability to break down electronics in a biologically safe way has huge benefits. Environmental monitors could be peppered throughout an area without the need to worry about collecting them again later. Whether it’s tracking bird populations on a grassy tundra or measuring the chemistry of a oceanographic oil spill, the ability to use technology with a built-in timer will open up all new applications, or make feasible old ideas that could never succeed practically.

Though the team doesn’t mention it in the video, the US military has taken an interest in the concept. It’s not hard to image why, as covert technology advances along lines from miniaturization to autonomous artificial intelligence. In surveillance, the problem of extraction is just as profound as it is for surgery. The ability to insert a drone designed to die after a prescribed amount of time, to liquify or break down beyond the point of recognition, is extremely enticing to DARPA, the military’s advanced research arm. DARPA has thrown significant funding behind this effort, and no doubt has a wide array of application in mind.

Of course, not every component of modern circuit boards can be so easily replaced with a degradable polymer. Their primary material of interest is actually a purified form of the silk produced by silk worms for cocoons.  That works for the plastic boards and other simple substrates, but efficient conducting materials are much harder. They found that ribbons of magnesium work well as conductors since it will naturally break down to a molecular level when immersed in water. Super-thin sheets of silicon, used for semiconductors will break down in much the same way.

It’s also one thing to say that magnesium and silicon are safe to release into the body, but quite another to get government approval to test that idea. There’s really no telling how the body will react to such a release of chemicals into the bloodstream without directly testing it. That’s a hard road to hoe, however, one studded with predictable and unavoidable delays. Couple this with public fears (well founded and otherwise) about putting wireless technology in their bodies, and about implants of all types, and you have an issue these researchers will likely have to battle for several years to come.

In the end, the military and industrial applications for this technology will almost certainly beat the medical to market. Still, it’s an exciting idea that has to potential to change the way a whole sector of computer technology is both made and used.

Via The Guardian, Via Samantha Besson

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NSA spying, as revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, may cause countries to create separate networks and break up the experts, according to experts. Photograph: Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/NurPhoto/Corbis

The vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is leading to the breakup of the internet as countries scramble to protect private or commercially sensitive emails and phone records from UK and US security services, according to experts and academics.

They say moves by countries, such as Brazil and Germany, to encourage regional online traffic to be routed locally rather than through the US are likely to be the first steps in a fundamental shift in the way the internet works. The change could potentially hinder economic growth.

"States may have few other options than to follow in Brazil's path," said Ian Brown, from the Oxford Internet Institute. "This would be expensive, and likely to reduce the rapid rate of innovation that has driven the development of the internet to date … But if states cannot trust that their citizens' personal data – as well as sensitive commercial and government information – will not otherwise be swept up in giant surveillance operations, this may be a price they are willing to pay."

Since the Guardian's revelations about the scale of state surveillance, Brazil's government has published ambitious plans to promote Brazilian networking technology, encourage regional internet traffic to be routed locally, and is moving to set up a secure national email service.

In India, it has been reported that government employees are being advised not to use Gmail and last month, Indian diplomatic staff in London were told to use typewriters rather than computers when writing up sensitive documents.

In Germany, privacy commissioners have called for a review of whether Europe's internet traffic can be kept within the EU – and by implication out of the reach of British and US spies.

Surveillance dominated last week's Internet Governance Forum 2013, held in Bali. The forum is a UN body that brings together more than 1,000 representatives of governments and leading experts from 111 countries to discuss the "sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the internet".

Debates on child protection, education and infrastructure were overshadowed by widespread concerns from delegates who said the public's trust in the internet was being undermined by reports of US and British government surveillance.

Lynn St Amour, the Internet Society's chief executive, condemned government surveillance as "interfering with the privacy of citizens".

Johan Hallenborg, Sweden's foreign ministry representative, proposed that countries introduce a new constitutional framework to protect digital privacy, human rights and to reinforce the rule of law.

Meanwhile, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – which is partly responsible for the infrastructure of the internet – last week voiced "strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance".

Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation in Washington, said the Snowden revelations were pushing the internet towards a tipping point with huge ramifications for the way online communications worked.

"We are certainly getting pushed towards this cliff and it is a cliff we do not want to go over because if we go over it, I don't see how we stop. It is like a run on the bank – the system we have now works unless everyone decides it doesn't work then the whole thing collapses."

Castro said that as the scale of the UK and US surveillance operations became apparent, countries around the globe were considering laws that would attempt to keep data in-country, threatening the cloud system – where data stored by US internet firms is accessible from anywhere in the world.

He said this would have huge implications for the way large companies operated.

"What this would mean is that any multinational company suddenly has lots of extra costs. The benefits of cloud computing that have given us flexibility, scaleability and reduced costs – especially for large amounts of data – would suddenly disappear."

Large internet-based firms, such as Facebook and Yahoo, have already raised concerns about the impact of the NSA revelations on their ability to operate around the world. "The government response was, 'Oh don't worry, we're not spying on any Americans'," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. "Oh, wonderful: that's really helpful to companies trying to serve people around the world, and that's really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies."

Castro wrote a report for Itif in August predicting as much as $35bn could be lost from the US cloud computing market by 2016 if foreign clients pull out their businesses. And he said the full economic impact of the potential breakup of the internet was only just beginning to be recognised by the global business community.

"This is changing how companies are thinking about data. It used to be that the US government was the leader in helping make the world more secure but the trust in that leadership has certainly taken a hit … This is hugely problematic for the general trust in the internet and e-commerce and digital transactions."

Brown said that although a localised internet would be unlikely to prevent people in one country accessing information in another area, it may not be as quick and would probably trigger an automatic message telling the user that they were entering a section of the internet that was subject to surveillance by US or UK intelligence.

"They might see warnings when information is about to be sent to servers vulnerable to the exercise of US legal powers – as some of the Made in Germany email services that have sprung up over the summer are."

He said despite the impact on communications and economic development, a localised internet might be the only way to protect privacy even if, as some argue, a set of new international privacy laws could be agreed.

"How could such rules be verified and enforced? Unlike nuclear tests, internet surveillance cannot be detected halfway around the world."

Via Wolfram blog

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Computational knowledge. Symbolic programming. Algorithm automation. Dynamic interactivity. Natural language. Computable documents. The cloud. Connected devices. Symbolic ontology. Algorithm discovery. These are all things we’ve been energetically working on—mostly for years—in the context of Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica, CDF and so on.

But recently something amazing has happened. We’ve figured out how to take all these threads, and all the technology we’ve built, to create something at a whole different level. The power of what is emerging continues to surprise me. But already I think it’s clear that it’s going to be profoundly important in the technological world, and beyond.

At some level it’s a vast unified web of technology that builds on what we’ve created over the past quarter century. At some level it’s an intellectual structure that actualizes a new computational view of the world. And at some level it’s a practical system and framework that’s going to be a fount of incredibly useful new services and products.

I have to admit I didn’t entirely see it coming. For years I have gradually understood more and more about what the paradigms we’ve created make possible. But what snuck up on me is a breathtaking new level of unification—that lets one begin to see that all the things we’ve achieved in the past 25+ years are just steps on a path to something much bigger and more important.

I’m not going to be able to explain everything in this blog post (let’s hope it doesn’t ultimately take something as long as A New Kind of Science to do so!). But I’m excited to begin to share some of what’s been happening. And over the months to come I look forward to describing some of the spectacular things we’re creating—and making them widely available.

It’s hard to foresee the ultimate consequences of what we’re doing. But the beginning is to provide a way to inject sophisticated computation and knowledge into everything—and to make it universally accessible to humans, programs and machines, in a way that lets all of them interact at a vastly richer and higher level than ever before.

A crucial building block of all this is what we’re calling the Wolfram Language.

In a sense, the Wolfram Language has been incubating inside Mathematica for more than 25 years. It’s the language of Mathematica, and CDF—and the language used to implement Wolfram|Alpha. But now—considerably extended, and unified with the knowledgebase of Wolfram|Alpha—it’s about to emerge on its own, ready to be at the center of a remarkable constellation of new developments.

We call it the Wolfram Language because it is a language. But it’s a new and different kind of language. It’s a general-purpose knowledge-based language. That covers all forms of computing, in a new way.

There are plenty of existing general-purpose computer languages. But their vision is very different—and in a sense much more modest—than the Wolfram Language. They concentrate on managing the structure of programs, keeping the language itself small in scope, and relying on a web of external libraries for additional functionality. In the Wolfram Language my concept from the very beginning has been to create a single tightly integrated system in which as much as possible is included right in the language itself.

And so in the Wolfram Language, built right into the language, are capabilities for laying out graphs or doing image processing or creating user interfaces or whatever. Inside there’s a giant web of algorithms—by far the largest ever assembled, and many invented by us. And there are then thousands of carefully designed functions set up to use these algorithms to perform operations as automatically as possible.

Over the years, I’ve put immense effort into the design of the language. Making sure that all the different pieces fit together as smoothly as possible. So that it becomes easy to integrate data analysis here with document generation there, with mathematical optimization somewhere else. I’m very proud of the results—and I know the language has been spectacularly productive over the course of a great many years for a great many people.

But now there’s even more. Because we’re also integrating right into the language all the knowledge and data and algorithms that are built into Wolfram|Alpha. So in a sense inside the Wolfram Language we have a whole computable model of the world. And it becomes trivial to write a program that makes use of the latest stock price, computes the next high tide, generates a street map, shows an image of a type of airplane, or a zillion other things.

We’re also getting the free-form natural language of Wolfram|Alpha. So when we want to specify a date, or a place, or a song, we can do it just using natural language. And we can even start to build up programs with nothing more than natural language.

There are so many pieces. It’s quite an array of different things.

But what’s truly remarkable is how they assemble into a unified whole.

Partly that’s the result of an immense amount of work—and discipline—in the design process over the past 25+ years. But there’s something else too. There’s a fundamental idea that’s at the foundation of the Wolfram Language: the idea of symbolic programming, and the idea of representing everything as a symbolic expression. It’s been an embarrassingly gradual process over the course of decades for me to understand just how powerful this idea is. That there’s a completely general and uniform way to represent things, and that at every level that representation is immediately and fluidly accessible to computation.

It can be an array of data. Or a piece of graphics. Or an algebraic formula. Or a network. Or a time series. Or a geographic location. Or a user interface. Or a document. Or a piece of code. All of these are just symbolic expressions which can be combined or manipulated in a very uniform way.

But in the Wolfram Language, there’s not just a framework for setting up these different kinds of things. There’s immense built-in curated content and knowledge in each case, right in the language. Whether it’s different types of visualizations. Or different geometries. Or actual historical socioeconomic time series. Or different forms of user interface.

I don’t think any description like this can do the concept of symbolic programming justice. One just has to start experiencing it. Seeing how incredibly powerful it is to be able to treat code like data, interspersing little programs inside a piece of graphics, or a document, or an array of data. Or being able to put an image, or a user interface element, directly into the code of a program. Or having any fragment of any program immediately be runnable and meaningful.

In most languages there’s a sharp distinction between programs, and data, and the output of programs. Not so in the Wolfram Language. It’s all completely fluid. Data becomes algorithmic. Algorithms become data. There’s no distinction needed between code and data. And everything becomes both intrinsically scriptable, and intrinsically interactive. And there’s both a new level of interoperability, and a new level of modularity.

So what does all this mean? The idea of universal computation implies that in principle any computer language can do the same as any other. But not in practice. And indeed any serious experience of using the Wolfram Language is dramatically different than any other language. Because there’s just so much already there, and the language is immediately able to express so much about the world. Which means that it’s immeasurably easier to actually achieve some piece of functionality.

I’ve put a big emphasis over the years on automation. So that the Wolfram Language does things automatically whenever you want it to. Whether it’s selecting an optimal algorithm for something. Or picking the most aesthetic layout. Or parallelizing a computation efficiently. Or figuring out the semantic meaning of a piece of data. Or, for that matter, predicting what you might want to do next. Or understanding input you’ve given in natural language.

Fairly recently I realized there’s another whole level to this. Which has to do with the actual deployment of programs, and connectivity between programs and devices and so on. You see, like everything else, you can describe the infrastructure for deploying programs symbolically—so that, for example, the very structure and operation of the cloud becomes data that your programs can manipulate.

And this is not just a theoretical idea. Thanks to endless layers of software engineering that we’ve done over the years—and lots of automation—it’s absolutely practical, and spectacular. The Wolfram Language can immediately describe its own deployment. Whether it’s creating an instant API, or putting up an interactive web page, or creating a mobile app, or collecting data from a network of embedded programs.

And what’s more, it can do it transparently across desktop, cloud, mobile, enterprise and embedded systems.

It’s been quite an amazing thing seeing this all start to work. And being able to create tiny programs that deploy computation across different systems in ways one had never imagined before.

This is an incredibly fertile time for us. In a sense we’ve got a new paradigm for computation, and every day we’re inventing new ways to use it. It’s satisfying, but more than a little disorienting. Because there’s just so much that is possible. That’s the result of the unique convergence of the different threads of technology that we’ve been developing for so long.

Between the Wolfram Language—with all its built-in computation and knowledge, and ways to represent things—and our Universal Deployment System, we have a new kind of universal platform of incredible power. And part of the challenge now is to find the best ways to harness it.

Over the months to come, we’ll be releasing a series of products that support particular ways of using the Wolfram Engine and the Universal Platform that our language and deployment system make possible.

There’ll be the Wolfram Programming Cloud, that allows one to create Wolfram Language programs, then instantly deploy them in the cloud through an instant API, or a form-based app, or whatever. Or deploy them in a private cloud, or, for example, through a Function Call Interface, deploy them standalone in desktop programs and embedded systems. And have a way to go from an idea to a fully deployed realization in an absurdly short time.

There’ll be the Wolfram Data Science Platform, that allows one to connect to all sorts of data sources, then use the kind of automation seen in Wolfram|Alpha Pro, then pick out and modify Wolfram Language programs to do data science—and then use CDF to set up reports to generate automatically, on a schedule, through an API, or whatever.

There’ll be the Wolfram Publishing Platform that lets you create documents, then insert interactive elements using the Wolfram Language and its free-form linguistics—and then deploy the documents, on the web using technologies like CloudCDF, that instantly support interactivity in any web browser, or on mobile using the Wolfram Cloud App.

And we’ll be able to advance Mathematica a lot too. Like there’ll be Mathematica Online, in which a whole Mathematica session runs on the cloud through a web browser. And on the desktop, there’ll be seamless integration with the Wolfram Cloud, letting one have things like persistent symbolic storage, and instant large-scale parallelism.

And there’s still much more; the list is dauntingly long.

Here’s another example. Just as we curate all sorts of data and algorithms, so also we’re curating devices and device connections. So that built into the Wolfram Language, there’ll be mechanisms for communicating with a very wide range of devices. And with our Wolfram Embedded Computation Platform, we’ll have the Wolfram Language running on all sorts of embedded systems, communicating with devices, as well as with the cloud and so on.

At the center of everything is the Wolfram Language, and we intend to make this as widely accessible to everyone as possible.

The Wolfram Language is a wonderful first language to learn (and we’ve done some very successful experiments on this). And we’re planning to create a Programming Playground that lets anyone start to use the language—and through the Programming Cloud even step up to make some APIs and so on for free.

We’ve also been building the Wolfram Course Authoring Platform, that does major automation of the process of going from a script to all the elements of an online course—then lets one deploy the course in the cloud, so that students can have immediate access to a Wolfram Language sandbox, to be able to explore the material in the course, do exercises, and so on. And of course, since it’s all based on our unified system, it’s for example immediate that data from the running of the course can go into the Wolfram Data Science Platform for analysis.

I’m very excited about all the things that are becoming possible. As the Wolfram Language gets deployed in all these different places, we’re increasingly going to be able to have a uniform symbolic representation for everything. Computation. Knowledge. Content. Interfaces. Infrastructure. And every component of our systems will be able to communicate with full semantic fidelity, exchanging Wolfram Language symbolic expressions.

Just as the lines between data, content and code blur, so too will the lines between programming and mere input. Everything will become instantly programmable—by a very wide range of people, either by using the Wolfram Language directly, or by using free-form natural language.

There was a time when every computer was in a sense naked—with just its basic CPU. But then came things like operating systems. And then various built-in languages and application programs. What we have now is a dramatic additional step in this progression. Because with the Wolfram Language, we can in effect build into our computers a vast swath of existing knowledge about computation and about the world.

If we’re forming a kind of global brain with all our interconnected computers and devices, then the Wolfram Language is the natural language for it. Symbolically representing both the world and what can be created computationally. And, conveniently enough, being efficient and understandable for both computers and humans.

The foundations of all of this come from decades spent on Mathematica, and Wolfram|Alpha, and A New Kind of Science. But what’s happening now is something new and unexpected. The emergence, in effect, of a new level of computation, supported by the Wolfram Language and the things around it.

So far I can see only the early stages of what this will lead to. But already I can tell that what’s happening is our most important technology project yet. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s incredibly exciting to see it all unfold. And I can’t wait to go from “Coming Soon” to actual systems that people everywhere can start to use…

Via Mashable

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Via PC World

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3D printing may have an image problem. It’s sometimes seen as a hobbyist pursuit—a fun way to build knickknacks from your living room desktop—but a growing number of companies are giving serious thought to the technology to help get new ideas off the ground.

That’s literally off the ground in aircraft maker Boeing’s case. Thirty thousand feet in the air, some planes made by Boeing are outfitted with air duct components, wiring covers, and other small, general parts that have been made via 3D printing, or, as the process is known in industrial applications, additive manufacturing. The company also uses additive manufacturing with metal to produce prototype parts for form, fit and function tests.

Whether it’s the living room or a corporate factory, the underlying principle of 3D printing—additive manufacturing—is the same. It’s different from traditional manufacturing techniques such as subtractive or formative manufacturing, which mainly rely on removing material through molding, drilling or grinding. Additive manufacturing instead starts from scratch and binds layers of material sequentially in extremely thin sheets, into a shape designed with 3D modeling software.

Please, we call it "additive manufacturing"

Boeing has been conducting research and development in the area of additive manufacturing since 1997, but the company wants to scale up its processes in the years ahead so it can use the technology to build larger, structural components that can be widely incorporated into military and commercial aircraft.

For these larger titanium structures that constitute the backbone of aircraft, “they generally fall outside of the capacity of additive manufacturing in its current state because they’re larger than the equipment that can make them,” said David Dietrich, lead engineer for additive manufacturing in metals at Boeing.

“That’s our goal through aggressive new machine designs—to scale to larger applications,” he said.

Boeing’s use of 3D printing may seem unconventional because of the growing attention on the technology’s consumer applications for things like toys, figurines and sculptures. But it’s not.

In industry, “we don’t like to refer to it as ‘3D printing’ because the term additive manufacturing has been around longer and is more accepted,” Dietrich said.

For consumers, some of the more prominent 3D printer makers include MakerBot, MakieLab and RepRap; industrial-grade makers include 3D Systems, which also makes lower-cost models, Stratasys, ExOne and EOS.

The cost of a 3D printer varies widely. 3D Systems’ Cube, which is designed for home users and hobbyists, starts at around $1,300. But machines built for industrial-grade manufacturing in industries like aerospace, automotive and medical, such as those made by ExOne, can fetch prices as high as $1 million.

The average selling price for an industrial-grade 3D printer is about $75,000, according to market research compiled by Terry Wohlers, an analyst who studies trends in 3D printing. Most consumer printers go for between $1,500 and $3,000, he said.

3D printing or additive manufacturing offers several advantages over traditional subtractive processes. The biggest benefit, some businesses say, is that the technology allows for speedier, one-off production of products in-house.

At Boeing, the team handling additive manufacturing in plastics has cut down its processing time dramatically. While it might take up to a year to make some small parts using conventional tools, 3D printing can lessen the processing time to a week, said Michael Hayes, lead engineer for additive manufacturing in plastics at the company.

The company can also more easily tweak its products using the technology, he said. “You can fail early,” Hayes said. “You can make the first part very quickly, make changes, and get to a high-quality part faster.”

Far beyond the hobbiests

NASA is another organization that is using 3D printers to experiment. The space agency has been looking at the technology for years, but over the past six months, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been using the technology more frequently to test new concepts for parts that may soon find their way into spacecraft.

Located in Pasadena, California, the lab has a dozen 3D printers including consumer models made by companies such as MakerBot, Stratasys and 3D Systems.

Previously, 3D printers were too expensive, but the revolution now is their affordability, said Tom Soderstrom, chief technology officer at the lab. JPL uses the printers as a brainstorming tool as part of what Soderstrom calls their “IT petting zoo.”

So far, the program’s results have been good. This past summer, mechanical engineers used the printers to create concepts for simple items like table trays. But an actual stand for a webcam was produced too, to be used for conference calls. And engineers realized, using the 3D printers, they could incorporate the same swivel mechanism that was used for the stand into their design for a new spacecraft part for deploying parachutes.

“That was the ‘aha’ moment,” Soderstrom said, that the printers could be used to conceive and print parts for actual spacecraft. The swivel part, which has been designed but not manufactured yet, would provide wiggle room to the parachute to reduce the torque or rotational impact when it deploys.

Another advantage of having a 3D printer in-house is that it can give a company an easier way to fine-tune designs for new products, Soderstrom said. “It can take you 20 times to get an idea right,” he said.

Soderstrom hopes that eventually entire spacecraft could be printed using the technology. The spacecraft would be unmanned, and small, perhaps a flat panel the size of an art book. “Not all spacecraft need to look like the Voyager,” Soderstrom said.

For consumer-level 3D printers, the technology is still developing. Depending on the machine, the printed objects are not always polished, and the software to make the designs can be buggy and difficult to learn, Soderstrom said. Software for generating designs for 3D printing can be supplied by the printer vendor, take the form of computer-aided design programs such as Autodesk, or come from large engineering companies like Siemens.

Still, Soderstrom recommends that CIOs make the investment in 3D printing and purchase or otherwise obtain several machines on loan. They don’t have to be the most expensive models, he said, but companies should try to identify which business units might see the most benefit from the machines. Companies should try to find somebody who can act as the “IT concierge”—a person with knowledge of the technology who can advise the company how best to use it.

“Producing a high-fidelity part on some of the cheaper 3D printers can be hard,” Soderstrom said. “This concierge could help with that.” Certain skills this person may need could include knowing how to work with multiple different materials within a single object, he said.

Companies don’t have to be as large as Boeing or NASA to get some use out of 3D printers. The technology is also an option for small-business owners and entrepreneurs looking to make customized designs for prototypes and then print them in small-scale runs.

A new take on 3D printing

One company making strategic use of 3D printing is shipping and logistics giant UPS. The company, which also makes its services available to smaller customers via storefront operations, has responded to the growing interest in the technology with a program designed to help small businesses and startups that may not have the funds to purchase their own 3D printer.

A poll of small-business owners conducted by UPS showed high interest in trying out the technology, particularly among those wanting to create prototypes, artistic renderings or promotional materials. So, in July the company announced the start of a program that UPS said makes it the first nationwide retailer to test 3D printing services in-store.

Staples claims to be the first retailer to stock 3D printers for consumers, but UPS says its program makes it the first to offer 3D printing services like computer-aided design consultations in addition to the printing itself.

Currently, there are six independently owned UPS store locations offering Stratasys’ uPrint SE Plus printer, an industrial-grade machine. A store in San Diego was the first to get it, followed by locations in Washington, D.C.; Chicago; New York; and outside Dallas. In September, the printer was installed at a location in Menlo Park, California, just off Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, a street known for its concentration of venture capital companies backing tech startups.

The UPS Store will gather feedback from store owners and customers over the next 12 months and then will decide whether to add printers in additional stores if the test is successful.

So far at the San Diego store, costs to the customer have ranged from $10, for lifelike knuckles printed by a medical device developer, to $500 for a prototype printed by a prosthetics company. The biggest factor in determining price is the complexity of the design.

The customer brings in a digital file in the STL format to the store. The store then checks to make sure the file is print-ready by running it through a software program. If it is, the customer gets a quote for the printing and labor costs.

Sometimes the digital file needs to be reworked or created from scratch. In such cases, the customer can work with a contracted 3D printing designer to iron out the design. Depending on how this meeting goes, it can be a several-step process before a file is ready for printing, said Daniel Remba, the UPS Store’s small-business technology leader, who leads the company’s 3D printing project.

So far at the San Diego store, there have been several different types of customers coming in to use the printer, said store owner Burke Jones. They have ranged from small startups to engineers from larger companies, government contractors and other people who just have an interesting idea, he said.

One customer wanted a physical 3D replica of his own head, Jones said. There was also a scuba diver who printed a light filter for an underwater lamp and a mountain biker who printed a mount for a camera.

For early stage companies, Jones estimates that the store has printed roughly a couple dozen product prototypes. In total, the store has done probably as many as 50 printing jobs for various types of customers, he said, producing 200 different parts.

In Menlo Park, the store has completed about 10 jobs with the printer, with at least 25 other inquiries pending.

A virtual physical enterprise

There are other online companies that offer 3D printing services. Two sites are Shapeways and Quickparts, which take files uploaded by the customer and then print the object for them. But the UPS Store project is different because it’s more personal, Jones said.

“We get to know the people, and their vision,” he said.

3D Hubs is another company betting that there are people who are interested in 3D printers but don’t own one. The site operates like an Airbnb for 3D printers, by helping people find 3D printers that are owned by other people or businesses nearby.

3D printing is already a crucial element in some large companies’ manufacturing processes. But for smaller companies, the technology’s biggest obstacle may be a lack of awareness about when it’s right to use it, said Pete Brasiliere, an industry analyst with Gartner.

Though the desktop machines may not be as advanced, their popularity within the “maker” culture could provide that knowledge to the business world. “The hype around the consumer market has made senior management aware,” Brasiliere said.

Via The Verge

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Via motherboard

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Humanity just made a large, DIY step towards a time when everyone can upgrade themselves towards being a cyborg. Of all places, it happened somewhere in the post-industrial tristesse of the German town of Essen.

It's there that I met up with biohacker Tim Cannon, and followed along as he got what is likely the first-ever computer chip implant that can record and transmit his biometrical data. Combined in a sealed box with a battery that can be wirelessly charged, it's not a small package. And as we saw, Cannon had it implanted directly under his skin by a fellow biohacking enthusiast, not a doctor, and without anesthesia.

Called the Circadia 1.0, the implant can record data from Cannon's body and transfer it to any Android-powered mobile device. Unlike wearable computers and biometric-recording devices like Fitbit, the subcutaneous device is open-source, and allows the user  full control over how data is collected and used.

The Circadia device before being implanted in Cannon's arm.

Because a regular surgeon wouldn't be allowed to implant a device unapproved by medical authorities, Tim relied on the expertise of body modification enthusiasts, who had all met in Essen for the BMXnet conference. The procedure itself was so delicate that not only were we not allowed to film the thing, but we were not even able to share where exactly it took place.

One of the pioneers in body modification is Steve Haworth, who conducted the surgery. Despite a family background in medical device engineering, Haworth turned to the more experimental side of altering the human body in the early 90s, first with piercing and tattoo studios in Phoenix and later by developing modifications like 3D tattoos and the metal mohawk. Haworth used his own tools for the surgery, and as he's not a board-certified surgeon, was not able to use anesthetics. He did assure me that "there are pretty amazing things we can do with ice." It sounded convincing at the time.

Tim Cannon.

Circadia 1.0 was built by Tim and colleagues from his company, Grindhouse Wetware. This team of hackers and artists—self-taught and trained in the traditional sense—has become well-known for converting garages and basements in Pittsburgh into their laboratory for developing the man-machine future.

In its first version, the chip can record Cannon's body temperature and transfer it in real time via Bluetooth. Three LEDs built into the package serve as status lights, and can be controlled to light up the tattoo in Cannon's forearm.

It's a humble beginning, but updates are on the way. Grindehouse Wetware have already completed the development of a pulse monitoring device, and he's also been able to shrink the size of the Circadia system, which will make the procedure quite a bit more user-friendly. He's also working to automate communication between the chip and the internet of things.

"I think that our environment should listen more accurately und more intuitively to what's happening in our body," Cannon explained. "So if, for example, I've had a stressful day, the Circadia will communicate that to my house and will prepare a nice relaxing atmosphere for when I get home: dim the lights, let in a hot bath."

So Cannon is essentially trying to integrate the body into the growing quantified and connected universe. But unlike the life-loggers and step-counter-users, biohackers take the concept of self-improvement to the next level. Why would one literally hack his body?

According to Cannon, the developments are not about simply trying to insert gadgets into one's body for a performance enhancement. The end goal is to transcend the boundaries of biology, and try to hack evolution itself.

As hacking, both for good and bad, has become pervasive in society, and as the appropriation of communication networks has become a common battleground, biohackers like Cannon are trying to take the fight for self-determination into the realm to the technologized body.

It's as if there a new dimension has been added to Michel Foucault's terms biopolitics and biopower, which he developed in the 1970s. Through biopower, Foucault described the emergence of a new form of power and politics as an extension to traditional state power in the 20th century, which takes the body as an object of quantification and the reproduction of society's power structures. His point seems valid today, as the political fights of our time not only take place in legal discourses, but are also being staged over what's legal to do with one's own body.

In the future, hackers' and activists' disputes with restrictive governments may not only be about communication, information, and digital infrastructure, but may also shift into debates about our own technologically-improved physical beings. In the face of companies and governmental agencies developing implants that are protected by patents and secret test procedures, the question of how to remain in control of our bodies may turn out to be a very real pressing social issue, something Cannon is preemptively trying to push against.

Cannon does hold the human body as imperfect and failing in many ways, and refuses to obey the "established medical industry's artificial ideas about what 100 percent is." He has also decided to pause theoretical and academic discussions on immortality, and is focusing instead on what he terms practical transhumanism. In essence, he aims to use open-source and networked research approaches to define the capabilities of his body and to find out how far he can upgrade himself.

The security risks are real, as we've learned with Dick Cheney's heart. At the same time, complex medical products tend to be mostly restricted to those who can afford them. Even though the former vice president may dislike the thought, a bunch of biohackers aim to prove that a well-connected and enthusiastic underground culture of self-taught garage tinkerers may be able to increase the safety and accessibility of medical devices. The Linux community stands as proof enough for Cannon that open source implant can be developed safely and securely.

Building on the much cheaper development costs of an open coding-network, Tim wants to realize his goal of offering cheap organs for everyone in a near future. "We have been working on the Circadia Chip for 18 months, needing only a fraction of the costs that big companies would use for this," he said. "The same will go for our next projects and an artificial heart is a goal for us for the next decade."

Tim Cannon demonstrates the prototype of the Circadia and the control commands on his tablet device.

In a few months, the first production series of the Circadia chip should be ready. With an expected price of around $500, the chip should be relatively accessible for just about any enthusiast, and will mainly be distributed through the networks of the body modification community. That means that if you find the right local establishment, you could have your own chip installed. Haworth told me that he would charge roughly $200 for the procedure itself.

The question of whether or not we'll blur the line between man and machine, of whether or not we'll enhance the human body, has long been answered in the affirmative. Now it's a question of who will break new ground, and when. As to whether or not the roboticiziation of humans is found in better hands with DIY enthusiasts or the medical establishment, and who will make farther strides, only time will tell.

In the meantime, there are just slight battery difficulties to be resolved: