Continuing on the discussion of the McKinsey’s Advanced Institute document and including the figure of the expected impact on Society, biz and economies.

Credits: McKinsey’s Advanced Institute

- Advanced Robotics presented in the document emphasise the evolution of dexterity in robots making them more and more useful in a variety of fields, including human prosthetics and fields that today are not considered. I concur in this analyses but I foresee that in the next decade we will have robots (in particular micro robots) interacting one another, in some cases forming a swarm. We will see the first signs of full scale automation based on robots, like the one in smart cities, in the same way that today we see completely robotised management of parcels by Federal Express at their Memphis hub.

- Autonomous and near autonomous vehicles will surely increase their footprint.  We already have autonomous trains (underground trains, airport infra terminal transportation…) and autonomous carts moving in warehouses. The Google car shows that technology exists to make this possible. It is very expensive today but the cost will surely go down to the point of becoming affordable. What I am not sure is the cultural acceptance of this sort of vehicles in the mass market. May be a strong economic crunch due to carbon taxes compounded by increased cost in energy may force its acceptance. However, if I have to bet, I would rather bet on an increased availability of energy in the next decade rather than an energy shortage. If there will not be a sort of forced adoption I doubt that the mass market will move to self driven cars.

- Next generation genomics is about applying the knowledge that is being created, and harvested, through the sequencing of genomes, in humans and in other species, to radically improve health care and productivity for crops and derivative products (like ethanol from plants/algae). Here I am fully in synch. Advances will continue at an exponential rate throughout this decade in the sequencing area, lowering the cost below the 20$ per genome and decreasing the sequencing time to a few hours (or less for specific parts of the genome). In turns this is leading to an amazing increase in data that can be processed statistically to create more knowledge. The embedding on sensors will provide for continuous monitoring of the effect of personalised drugs and will sustain the shift of paradigm towards a customised cure. I also see that the additional knowledge derived from understanding the creation of life will bring new possibility to develop smart materials.

- 3D printing is moving from prototyping to real everyday object printing. This has the potential of changing, or at least affecting logistic and distribution. It can stimulate innovation as more and more the “design” part can be sold by anyone and from everywhere through the Web leaving the implementation part to the local premises. I do not see this as greatly affecting the mass market in terms of killing existing mass production that I feel will remain through the next decade competitive in terms of cost and quality. It might supplement the centralised mass production, like home printers have supplemented the printing factories, but still books and magazines are not printed locally at home.

- Advanced Materials are making significant progress thanks to nanotechnology allowing the design of the physical characteristics of materials and to the embedding of electronics. I see an interesting aspect in the advance of materials in the line of smart materials, materials that have the capability of interacting with their environment creating intelligent, adaptable responses to a variety of stimuli. This can represent the building blocks leading in the next decade to ambient awareness.

More on next post.

I stumbled on a forecast released by McKinsey’s Advanced Institute on 12 technologies that will (might?) transform the world in the next decade in terms of impact on life and economics and I would like to share it with you with some comments from my side.

The 12 technology areas identified by McKinsey’s Advanced Institute

- Mobile Internet is already a reality. What is happening is that in the developing world where no fixed lines are available in the mass market (and most likely will not be widespread and pervasive also in the next decade) the access to Internet will be wireless, hence mobile. What I see, however, is the growth of a “mobile culture” in the sense that everybody will get used to be part of the Internet, will consider Internet (its information, services, links) as an integral part of their life. We will likely forget that we used to have manuals, and we will probably forget that we used to learn dates, how to do, and so on. Quite seamlessly we will just get what we need when we need it. Planning will be a thing of the past, in many areas of the everyday life.

- Automation of knowledge work is something that has been taking place in the last 200 years since the industrial revolution. The point is that we are shifting the meaning of “knowledge” (and intelligence). Centuries ago knowledge was about how to do things and it seemed at that time that a machine could not learn how to do thing, could only be a prosthetic augmenting the “mechanical” capability of a person, nothing more. Well it turned out that machines learned to do things and would increase their capabilities over time to the point of doing certain things better than an artisan, and for sure in larger volume at lower cost. We felt that playing chess was a matter of intelligence and that a machine would not be able to stand against a good player. We were proven wrong and we decided that actually playing chess is not based on “real” intelligence…. We have psychological problem in comparing ourself with machines because we are NOT machines.  Well, in the next decade the major shift in my mind will be the cultural acknowledgment that we ARE machines developed through eons of evolution. The outcome of the Human Brain project will be disruptive in this cultural sense, even more than in a technical sense (enabling new computational structures…). Hence the automation of knowledge work will just be another step in the increased sophistication of machines. What the futurist Thomas Frey  says “One common fallacy is that people are being replaced by machines. The reality is that machines don’t work without humans. A more accurate description is that a large number of people are being replaced by a smaller number of people using machines” does not resonate completely with me. My opinion is that this was true in the past, for the future I would say that the increased intelligence in machines will on the one hand replace people’s intelligence and on the other hand will challenge people to increase their intelligence, thus enabling new opportunities.

- Internet of Things is again already happening under our noses, although under the thresholds of our perception. More and more things are directly or indirectly connected to the Internet and the data generated are being used to create a larger map of connected objects that is virtualised on the Internet. This process will clearly continue in this and in the next decade and indeed I share the feeling that in the next decade we will have a mirroring of most of the objects made of atoms into objects made of bits and residing on the Internet. This mirroring is opening up a new dimension, the one of the Internet WITH things, IwT. We will be able to interact with both the objects made of atoms and the ones made of bits and the boundary of one vs the other will tend to fade away in our perception. Actually, most services will leverage the object made of bits because it is easier, and cheaper, to work on bits.

- Cloud technology is commoditising a good portion of IT and it will likely continue to do so in the rest of this decade. In the next decade what I see is that the pervasiveness of IT will create a global fabric where a significant portion of services and information will be spread out, thinly, at the edges, in objects and devices, in what is starting to be known as “the fog”.

I’ll continue to examine the remaining technology areas in the next posts.

Do you remember Merlin the Wizard creating objects out of nowhere just shaking his magic wand?

Well, I was reminded about that when I saw this news on a new material that can be used as a ink in a special pen to create objects in thin air!

To really get the idea you should click on the link and look at the clip.

As you can see in the photo on the side, one can create objects by connecting wires, threads, coming out of the pen. The “invention” is a material that is liquid, so that it can flow out of the pen as you wave it, and as soon as it gets in contact with air it solidifies. It looks like plastic, so it is elastic, easy to bend and pretty strong.

The inventors imagine this as a new way of expression, to create art forms, as well as an amusing way of spending time. Moreover, they foresee the application of this “ink” in the context of 3D printing to create solid objects without the need for a separate glueing component, thus simplifying the process.

To me this is another example of innovation in the area of creating new materials with specific physical characteristics, something that will slowly change our world throughout this decade.

Bio-printing is already a reality, being used to print skin for patients having suffered from burns. We have had last year the first 3D printing of a mandible to substitute one affected by cancer.

3D printer in the process of printing a ear

Now researchers at Cornell University have announced the development of a process to print ears, using 3D printers.

Even though we may not consider our ears as a sophisticated device, just a piece of skin -right?!, they are. Their shape is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to come up with the right form, ensuring a good capturing of sounds.

There are thousands of children born without a fully developed ear, a congenital deformity called microtia, that can benefit from this research, in addition to people who had lost their ears because of an accident or cancer.

The researchers are using a gel with embedded living cells (from cartilage tissue) taken from rats and cows (click on the link to see a detailed description of the process used). Once implanted, the gel will be replaced by that person cells. The cartilage tissue (cells) don’t need to be vascularised, hence there are no problem with a patient rejecting the ear. However the researchers are working to be able to use as initial cells some taken form the patient to avoid any problem.

The 3D printer creates an ear that is basically indistinguishable from a natural one, using a 3D model created by laser scanning. The whole process can be done in a few weeks. So far there have been no implants but researchers are expecting this to happen within the next three years.

Headphones components produced through 3D printing. Image form Teague Labs

The number of news on the advances in 3D printing keeps growing, some related to better (and cheaper) 3D printers, others to growing fields of application.

On the left an image of headphones components produced using 3D printing. They are ready to be assembled and this can be done at home… Still it just represents another possible application and does not seem to be a game changer, and the same can be said for the many other applications that we have seen so far and for those you can see here, by 3D systems (look at the nice guitar that has been printed using their 3D printers!)

However, and this is what the science of connectivity in large sets is telling us, you may reach a point when all of a sudden particles that were independent one another and just connected to a few other become completely connected and change the overall structure (as it happens in areas like whipping up the eggs to make the mayonnaise….). It is what physicists call a phase transition.

It happens also in economic systems and in this case it changes the value chains that have been in place for decades and even centuries.

Well, someone has started to foresee this change as result of the growing application of 3D printing.

Acoustic guitar printed by 3DSystems

An interesting paper, that you can download here, deals with “the implication of 3D printing for the global logitic industry”.

According to the paper:

 ‘3D Printing’, or ‘additive manufacturing’ as it is also known, has the potential to become the biggest single disruptive phenomenon to impact global industry since assembly lines were introduced in early twentieth century America.

This is no small claim! As a matter of fact, think of the implications: what is now decentralised production (in China and the Far East) may be completely reversed by the possibility of producing products near the sales point (or even at home).

More than that. Whereas in mass production all product instances are the same, with a 3D printing potentially each product can be customised, thus transforming a product into a service at the production level. Additionally, customisation can be further enhanced by embedded chips (and software) and communications plugging in that product on the Internet.

I suggest to read the paper. It may be addressing a distant future but technology evolution is not just shrinking distance and cost, it is also shrinking time….

And if you still think it is just about a distant future, then read the announcement of the opening of the first 3D printing factory in NYC planning custom printing 5 million objects in 2013….

3D printing is now a reality, at the Future Centre we dreamt about the possibility of a market of one, created by the possibility to customise each product to a specific customer, back in 2008. At that time we foresaw a revolution in the value chain, since a stronger relation between manufacturer and client would become possible, intermediation of resellers would disappear and third parties would enter into the game by providing specific software.

That vision required 3D printing capabilities and embedded software. Over these five years we have seen a good portion of this vision become reality. The smart phone world is now approaching the market of one if you think in terms of functionalities (it is very likely that each single smart phone is different from any other because of the different set of apps it has), many industries are now 3D printing their products, although we do not have 3D printers in our closet (that was forecast for the end of this decade so the jury is still out).

Printed electronics

Something we did not explicitly foresaw, but is surely part of the vision, is that 3D printing would accelerate the transformation of any object into a smart object. Indeed, with the possibility of 3D printing the object it becomes possible to print electronics as you create the object.

This is what Optomec is doing.

They have developed a technology for creating nanosized particles of silver. At that dimension they melt around 140 degrees Celsius, so it is easy to transform them into a ink that can be used to create electronic circuits as the 3D printer prints the object.

A recent article in the Economist about this technology goes as far as to say that with Optomec technology it has become possible to print your own cell phone (take a look at it, there is a nice cartoon about “printing a phone”).

What I feel is really interesting is the implication of this production technology. Basically, as industry moves towards 3D printing it becomes cost free to embed basic electronics in the object, like microchip for processing, sensors, antenna and so on. All of a sudden, that object has become a smart object, able to interact with us and with other objects, thus creating smart ambient.

Take a look at the clip showing the printing of electronics as part of the printing of a drone wing made by Optomec:

I have reported on this blog the progress being made in 3D printers and the variety of applications that can result from this, as well as the changes and impact on the distribution and retail structure.

There is Fab at Home where you can get updates of progress in this area, where people are sharing ideas and also apps in the 3D printing domain. Don’t think about it as just a hobbyist playground.

Synthesising drugs at home

Some serious research is going on there, like the one carried out by Lee Croning and his group.

They are using 3D printers to explore the feasibility of printing drugs, pills you may need to take for your flu…

Health care is taking advantage ever more of communications infrastructures and sensors (including the cell phone) to provide medical support, diagnoses, even to remote locations, something that is useful everywhere but particularly in developing countries and rural areas where no doctor is available. The problem is, once you have got the diagnoses how do you get the prescription?
This is what Lee’s group wants to solve and the application of 3D printing, in an ingenious way, can be the answer.

They are experimenting with various ways of creating drugs starting from basic components. The problem is that most drugs work because they have a specific tri-dimensional structure so it is not just a matter of pouring the desired ingredients and mix them together. And this is where 3D printing can provide the solution. His group has invented what they call a chemputer, a computer that works with chemical substances to create new ones by regulating the way they are dosed and mixed together.

I really feel we are going to see a revolution in health care by the end of this decade and a reshuffling in the whole value chain.

Have you ever been to a museum and wondered how that masterpiece would look like in your living room? Looks like technology can help you find out (and possibly is opening up a completely new set of issues about copyright…).

The original (in marble) and the replica (in plastic)

A group of geeks (if I may call them this way) interested in 3D printing went to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York City and scanned 34 sculptures using very sophisticated equipment, that is an app in their cell phone! Then they used that scanned image to print a replica of those artifacts, as shown in the picture here.

OK, no comparison with the original, but this is just because they used amateur 3D printer and plastic. The replica in terms of shape is really faithful to the original and by using a more sophisticated (read expensive) 3D printer able to use micro marble beads they would have obtained a perfect replica.

And we know very well that it is just a question of time before those sophisticated 3D printers price decrease to become affordable to the mass market. This is something completely new, no signs hanged on museums walls forbidding the duplication of statues showcased. Well, I guess it will change in the next few years. But you can bet it will be possible to find 3D representation of most masterpieces on the web ready to download on your 3D printer to get a nice replica.

And there is more! The Met scanned statues have been posted on the web and someone else started to create animations thus bringing those statues to life.

[vimeo 43848831]

The world of atoms is going to be transformed in this decade and will become something completely different in the next decade as atoms and bits will be linked one another and it will be more and more difficult to separate one from the others. The seamless interaction of several technologies, scanners (in your cell phone), 3D printers, animation applications, mash up of content and services will create a new ambient and open up a wealth of business opportunities.

It is now natural to snap photos everywhere, it will become natural to scan objects and have them recreated in atoms (or bits through augmented reality) as we collect photos in album (or on computer) today.

3D printing has been used for quite a number of years (first “printers” go back to the 80ies) by manufacturers for fast prototyping. As technology got better it allowed the printing of objects ever more complex and made by a variety of substances, including steel, glass, plastic,…

A pendant produced by Shapeways, designed by a customer and 3D printed

What was missing was speed (for printing mass products objects) and dramatic cost decrease (to make printers economically viable in a broader market). Researchers have been working on both and although speed is not, yet, comparable to industrial processes the cost has decreased significantly. Actually, it has reached a point where some companies are starting to offer customized production, like Shapeways.

Take a look at its website and discover how to have them printing “your ideas”.

You can ask them to produce a back cover for your iPhone (or any other kind of cell phone), a glass, a pendant, a… whatever!

You provide the design and they just print it for you. They also provide tools to help designing objects and you can do that as part of a community of builders that can interact with you to study for a better design.

This is really bringing production to your home. You can dream of having something, you work on your idea with tools you are used to, your hands and your computer, and get some help from a community of “builders”. Then it is just a matter of a few clicks and Shapeways will print your “idea”.

For a number of years, probably through this decade, this is what is 3D printing can deliver. In a longer term, however, we might imagine to have a small printer in our home to print that little piece that has to replace a used one, to serve as a just in time fulfillment of a need. I personally feel unlike a replacement of mass market production with home made production, even in very long time frame. The economies of scale are too big to be demoted. Clearly, ever increased customization capabilities may be expected s time goes by, particularly thanks to the software embedded in products that makes them so easy to custom and evolve.

I have posted a number of news on advances in 3D printing. This is just one more and it is notable for the flexibility it brings into 3D printing. Take a look at the clip:

The Media Lab is a pioneer in this area and I always enjoy seeing the amazing forms they print as demo. Clearly moving from the lab stage to the workshop or better to the home for on demand object printing is still far down the lane….