Quite an interesting article. I would have liked to see the author spend some time discussing how they each will play together and what impact that will have. The innovations are interesting to consider in isolation, but as our world grows more and more integrated, the real power of these things will be seen in how they are used in unison.
Quotes from the article:
Look for navigation services to get even more specific — maps in a store’s app, for example, to direct you to a specific aisle to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Hmmm...Wonder whether this will have any
impact, and if so what, on store layouts and merchandise offerings as a result of the changes such apps will have on consumers behavior. Currently, savvy mass appeal merchants deliberately place "destination" items so that customers are necessarily tempted by low priced "impulse" goods that, for the merchant, serve as high margin profit boosters.
With 3D printers accessible to anyone, the way we accumulate things will change. Who needs to buy it anymore when you can just print it?
I thought this "chapter" was interesting because just last week I stumbled across an article that discussed how
Christopher Laimer used a consumer grade 3D printer to produce a crude tourbillon escapement that actually works, albeit not as well as its handcrafted brethren.
The 3D printer promises to further erode the value of having manufacturers of myriad basic consumer goods. It seems that raw materials of a sort that such printers can use to produce various objects may well become what consumers demand rather than finished goods. To the extent that manufacturers are forced by consumer grade 3D printing to deliver
various raw material inputs, the value-add of what they produce declines, and in turn so does the prices/profits they obtain. We see this currently displayed in the difference between the price of, say, sand versus that of glass products from plate glass to drinking glasses. Obviously, we should expect to see continued declines in demand for unskilled labor as much of non-value-added materials production can be easily automated.
Also, one should expect certain sectors to shrink dramatically, except in the luxury segment within those sectors because consumer grade printers may not for quite some time have the precision to mirror traditional highest quality fabrication so as to yield the levels of performance consumers demand of such goods.
While this seems a bleak future for the world's mental midgets and intellectual loafers, it offers opportunity for innovators. For example, individuals with design skills will be able, in conjunction with self promotion tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like will be able to produce and sell original designs for complex goods -- goods that are complex in their own right or that require multiple parts that must be assembled to produce a final product -- that 3D printers can produce and that require an understanding of design and materials. In essence, 3D printing will create a market for individual's design ideas and programs whereas today the majority of us must rely upon manufacturers R&D and design departments to do that and then apply them to the production process. Other areas of growth are likely to be in recycling, especially metals and plastics, and chemicals.
Key takeaway: If you haven't already done so, invest in companies on the forefront of each of the technologies discussed in the article. Also invest in companies that provide supporting services such as chemicals manufacturers, recyclers, and printer producers.
I began my comments by mentioning a tourbillon escapement. I imagine such a thing and its complexity is relatively unknown to most people. For people not familiar with the high precision mechanics involved in a tourbillon escapement, here are some videos and a text discussion of them.
--
How a Tourbillon Escapement Works
Large scale tourbillon escapement
Tourbillon escapement watch being made
Schematic of a Tourbillon
Two tourbillon watches
In this video you can see the tourbillon marking half seconds, which is very uncommon.
