The Greatest Invention in History
One of the hallmarks of the post-Industrial Revolution world, brilliantly illustrated by Charles Chaplin in his 1936 movie “Modern Times,” is the assembly line. Before the First Industrial Revolution, which took place between the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, virtually all products were handmade. Steam power and innovations in manufacturing processes and machines enabled the creation of factories and division of labor — each worker would take care of one component belonging to the final product, which would be assembled as it passed through a conveyor belt or rails.
In his 2010 book “Why the West Rules — For Now,” English Historian Ian Morris presented a methodology to try to quantify the social development brought about by various inventions throughout History. He concluded that the steam engine was the equipment responsible for the most dramatic and fast changes in the progress of civilization. In fact, few events have had such a momentous impact on humanity as the change from a system of manual production to the establishment of factories. This not only marked the beginning of a new era of social and economic development, but also forever altered key aspects of production, access, distribution, and development.
Almost 300 years after the start of the First Industrial Revolution, we are still living in a world where the overwhelming majority of commercial products are mass-produced. Tennis shoes, handbags, cutlery, pens, phones, computers, cars, watches, toys — virtually everything around us is just one instance of a batch produced in a factory that still uses the same basic principles of the assembly line. The biggest differences between today’s factories and those of yore are the technological evolution of the equipment, improvements in final product quality, and process automation, with a greater presence of robots and machines instead of people.
Gradually, this situation seems to be losing its appeal for a part of the consumer market, which more and more seeks differentiation and customization. This vocal portion is led by millennials — the generation born between 1981 and 1996 according to Pew Research — who require that the brands they choose to serve them be socially responsible, in addition to offering flexible and adaptable products and services. The most connected generation in History, which creates and follows trends through social networks, popularized the concept of selfies, and prefers to follow the opinions of its friends rather than those of “experts” in a wide range of subjects, is now large and influential enough to modify the established economic standards.
The maker phenomenon, which we have already discussed here, is a direct consequence of this change. The very essence of this movement is precisely the ability to create, modify, test, customize the characteristics of a product so that it can have other uses or so that it can meet the specific needs of a user group. And few devices are more important to enable this revolution than the 3D printer.
If initially the objects produced by 3D printers had relatively little variability in terms of materials used, the equipment’s rapid technological evolution is already altering this scenario. Besides printing with organic materials (by itself, an extraordinary revolution for the food and healthcare industries), 3D printers can already produce objects in porcelain, ceramics, metals (aluminum, bronze, gold, silver, platinum, copper, steel), and plastic, among others. With the inevitable drop in both printer and raw material prices, it is only a matter of time before users will design, customize, as well as choose the materials, size, and colors of their next shoes (or purse, or shirt, or coat).
Consumables that do not need to be “tried” — such as books, music, films, tools, and toys — have already migrated from brick and mortar stores to computers through e-commerce. The next step is producing at home what needs to be tried and simulated — and the techniques for achieving such an end are becoming more and more sophisticated. Next time we will discuss Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality — two new tools with multiple uses for various business segments. See you then.
