October 5th, 2014

“That brings us back to the question of your relationship with Kodacell. They want to do what, exactly,  with you?” “Well, we’ve been playing with some mass production techniques, the three-D printer and so on. When Kettlebelly called me, he said that he wanted to see about using the scanner and so on to make a lot of these things, at a low price point.” (34 Doctorow)

Reading this section of the book discussing the mass production capabilities of the 3-D printer made me think about other things currently being printed with these machines. I was reminded of a TedTalk video that I saw about three-D printers being used in the medical field to print living human organs. The consequences of this technique for medical applications,  both good and bad, were of particular interest to me. Could this the be the cure to heart disease? To lung cancer? To cancer in general? If this is the case,  what would be the repercussions? I began to wonder if our bodies were easy to replace and repair, if we might began to treat them as disposable. Like the old iPod in the book, scuffed..and meant to be replaced in a year.