Just a few days ago I stumbled upon this TED talk:
and while I was already aware of 3D printing, there was something about this talk that captured my attention & imagination. As I see it, the key statement Lisa Harouni made in her talk is that with 3D printing the economies of scale disappear. You can make just one of something. That’s disruptive.
However, even though the printers themselves are becoming increasingly more affordable and are expected by many to be a house hold item in the not so distant future and as ubiquitous as standard desktop printers with their disappointing two dimensions, there’s still a key ingredient for success. I wouldn’t buy a 3D printer right now even if I had the money and space to spare. The reason is quite simple – I wouldn’t have anything to do with one. What exactly would I print? I’m not a designer and in order to print a part you need a physible – a digital plan for an object the printer can read.
A few months ago, with the passing of Steve Jobs, I watched a few documentaries about the early days of the personal computer. What Jobs and his nemesis IBM understood back in the early 80′s was that the mass adoption of personal computers does not depend solely on an affordable price or ease of use. They needed a killer application, a software that would make the computer a must have in the office and all in all a hot commodity. For the Apple II it was VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 was IBM’s killer app. 20 something years on, the same held true for the iPhone. It is arguably the fanciest gadget the world has ever seen, but how much success would it have gotten if Apple didn’t open app development to 3rd parties?
The point I’m trying to make is that in order for the 3D printer to become a product consumed en mass it needs to offer many physibles. It’s hard to say right now whether the business model will be more like Apple’s walled garden or Android’s open sphere (or maybe both), but if 3D printers take off, I’m sure we’ll see “design stores” where professional studios and skilled individuals offer their designs for free or a fee (small or hefty, depends on the complexity and the size of the target audience). Just as you can hire freelance graphic designers to design a logo, you’ll be able to get freelancers to build a model to suit your needs. I even think that there will be “do-it-yourself no design or experience required” services that would allow novices to build physibles with a simple drag-and-drop interface, just as there are services online right now that let you build apps without any coding.
Design sales will also become another stream of revenue for companies. A week or so ago a small piece of plastic broke in the refrigerator at my parents’ house, causing one of the doors to open up spontaneously. Apparently, replacing that small piece of plastic would cost an outrageous $75 for the part alone. Just as printer makers make their money on the ink or toner cartridges, I suspect the refrigerator manufacturer sees some nice revenue from parts replacement. In a 3D printing future, that stream of revenues will become a completely passive one – no need for actual manufacturing, shipping, handling suppliers etc.
Take the two paragraphs above an put them together. What do you think you’ll get? That’s right, pirating. The same way some of us download movies or music that fell from a virtual truck on the internet, or get paid apps for free for our phones, pirated physibles will be available out there on the internet too. After all, even if the cutting of costs mentioned above would lead to a lower price for a design, many people wouldn’t want to pay $60, or maybe even $6 to download it.
After zealously telling all of this to those around me in the days since watching that TED talk, I saw this article yesterday:
Forget MP3s: Soon You’ll Download Your Sneakers From The Pirate Bay
Here’s a small taste:
As a renowned hub for trading files, The Pirate Bay is in a perfect position to be the go-to place for free physibles, which it can facilitate while making money from ads. “We’re thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay,” the announcement jokes, but hopefully it’s half-serious.
Need I say more? 
Update Jan 29: As one courteous commenter noted, there is already a quite extensive depository for physibles: http://www.thingiverse.com/ . Furthermore, it appears there are diverse methods for 3D printing, especially when it comes to the materials used for the creation of the objects. My best guess is that much like processes we’ve seen with other innovative technologies (e.g. video-cassettes in the 80′s and high capacity discs twenty years on) it will take some time for the industry to converge upon a standard. We shall have to wait and see!
Update Jan 31: DMCA takedown notes for physibles, which are then found on the pirate bay.