Testing for twitter

Now i’ve dived into the murky waters of twitter once again, I may as well link everything up as i originally intended… 

What if you could print any 3d item you wanted in your kitchen?

Recently 3d printers have been gaining a lot of attention in print and online. How would 3d printing change your world? Would it change how you shop? Locally? Online? Your attitude to intellectual property? Would it save you time? Save you money? Reintroduce design skills? Empower us to become our own producers?

Or, would it change nothing? Instead, are we too busy, too time scarce to want to design our own goods? After all, wood is readily available to carve, gardens are available to grow our fruits and vegetables, yet grocery stores still thrive. Or are these entrenched attitudes reinforced by our current way of doing things?

It appears to me that currently the industry around 3d printing is either highly industrial, or very hobbyist. There is potentially a lot of scope for a popular market, if one can be grown, moving 3d printing towards purchasing patented designs like we buy music from iTunes, with one fixed ecosystem, from designs to materials to the machine which makes the item. Pure speculation, but whoever can get such an ecosystem hooked up soon might be on to a major head start…