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3D Printing and other Technologies Could Lead to an Economically Utopian Society
Without a doubt, their is a tremendous amount of suffering in this world. People are starving to death every day, many lack a warm shelter to come home to, and numerous governments around the globe are oppressing 
their people. The word “Utopia” likely isn’t something that could ever be imagined by many of these individuals, but it may be closer than we all think.
A utopian society is a society which has little worry. Everything within that society is near perfect, making it extremely desirable for those living in it. The term itself was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book “Utopia,” describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean, which was as close to perfect as one could imagine. Over the last 498 years since Sir Thomas More came up with this idea, various individuals and groups have proposed plans, and philosophies in which they thought such a society could one day be possible.
In my opinion, an economic utopia could one day be possible on this planet. I consider an “economic utopia,” as a society which has no financial worry. Everyone has what they need, and the majority of people have everything they could ever want, to some extent.
3D printing could be the key ingredient to such a society, free of financial worry, with its citizens able to spend their free time doing what they want to do, rather than what they have to do to survive. As 3D printing and robotics advance, and computer processing power, as well as cheap or even free energy takes hold, we may find ourselves in a world abundant with everything one could ever need.
Look back just three or four years ago. Common FDM based 3D printers were selling for over $3000 a piece. Fast forward about 1,000 days, and we now have 3D printers for under $300 which are capable of everything that those $3000 models were, and more. Now, what if we combined this exponential decrease in price with the exponential increase in technological advancement within the 3D printing, robotics, computer processing and energy industries, and looked ahead 20-30 years? What I see is a society capable of outsourcing a majority, if not all, of its labor to machines; a society which is able to relax, play, have fun, while the machines provide for us, what we need, when we need it. Now fast forward another 15 years from there, to 2049-2059, and we would have perfected an economic model capable of providing for all 8-9 billion people on this planet.
Eventually many up and coming technologies will converge, leaving us with 3D printers of all shapes and sizes, capable of printing in almost any material we know of today, 
as well as new, superior, man made materials of tomorrow. These printers could be maintained, built, and even supervised by robots with superhuman intelligence. Imagine a 3D printer which could print you out a smartphone, or one which could print you a steak dinner, and when that steak gives you heart disease, print you a replacement heart as well? All of these things will be possible to print. In fact, researchers are currently working on technology which will on day be capable of such.
Sure, there are many questions we will have to deal with. What will the socioeconomic downfalls of such a society be? Where would our drive for achievement stem from? What possible catastrophes could come about by these new technologies making their way into the wrong hands? These are things we will have to eventually deal with when the time has come, but for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. You just never know where it may take us. What do you think? Will we enter a near utopian society sometime in the next 40-50 years? Discuss this article about economic utopia at 3dPrintBoard.
13 Comments on "3D Printing and other Technologies Could Lead to an Economically Utopian Society"
Jerry McManus on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 5:04 pm
“for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. You just never know where it may take us.”
Ironically, probably the best advice I have seen for a very long time.
dave thompson on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 5:09 pm
With out affordable energy inputs, this is some much wishful thinking.
steveo on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 5:21 pm
How are they going 3D print new energy sources?
Techno-fantasy at its finest.
GregT on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 5:32 pm
They will have you believe, that we will print solar panels, nuclear reactors, and windmills, to power the printers, that print the printers, and the solar panels, nuclear reactors and windmills. It all makes perfect sense, in a perfect world. Utopia is finally upon us.
meld on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 8:28 pm
must…keeeeep…extrapolating…further……
DC on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 5:47 pm
Crappy article, but it did one thing going for it. I grabbed the jpeg for my collection-its not 1/2 bad.
louis wu on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 7:01 pm
So we won’t actually need bovines anymore we can just print bullshit literally.
Makati1 on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 7:57 pm
Best fantasy article this week! Only needs that “once-upon-a-time” beginning.
Since nothing comes from nothing, what materials are used in the process? Can they print a 10 ton steel I-beam? How about an aluminum engine block? Steel cable for elevators?
Even a simple thing like a frying pan is going to take huge amounts of energy (which is the problem in the first place) to produce the raw materials first, and the printer and the food for the operator(s) and the mechanic(s) to repair it and the new printer to replace it.
Seems to me that complicating the system is NOT the way to go. But then, I’m not a techie dreamer…
DMyers on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 8:11 pm
I suppose you can’t really fault someone for printing up some scenery from the very, very, very best case in future possibilities. There seems to be a big, dirty, grind up and spit out landscape that must be hidden behind the facade of utopia, here. The stuff we might be printing up is still stuff, and it surely requires input materials.
I’m fine with robots doing everything I used to do, as long as I still get paid for not doing it. I get the feeling that’s included in Utopia.
But you can’t tell me robots work for free. They’re getting something out of it.
I can’t help but believe that the main form of printing in Utopia is going to be MONEY PRINTING.
Let the gates to Techno-Heaven be opened. I’m ready to accept relief from labor and let the machines do it all. Thank God, the machines are going to pay me. We have a deal on the table, now. They seem very artificially intelligent.
Norm on Mon, 21st Apr 2014 8:38 pm
LOL 3D print me a 5 gallon gas can. How about a full one? That what happen now that author has legalized pot.
DC on Tue, 22nd Apr 2014 12:52 am
3D printers, in my mind, are low-tech-substitutes for Star-Treks ‘Replicators'(aka energy-to-matter devices). Now since S.T. ‘tech’ is completely mythical, but the underlying notion(you can press a button and something useful magically assembles itself out of thin air), is an appealing tech-NO-fix in a resource constrained world. 3D printers, while hardly energy-to-matter, are ‘good’ enough fill-ins for those that seem to think 3D printers are the next best thing to magic. IoW, something from, or for, nothing.
The strange thing about 3d Printers, is of course, what exactly is it about them that they think will ‘fix’ the current system? Tangible goods, if anything, are (mostly)getting cheaper in a market saturated world(quality often sucks but thats another issue). The problem isnt that people need more ‘stuff’-many of us have so much crap we rent storage lockers to store the surplus ‘stuff’ we accumulate. Most of the ‘stuff’ we ‘want’, are manufactured wants-ie marketing-not needs by any stretch. The problem ‘we’ have, is wages are stagnating or declining and things we actually NEED, food, clothes, shelter, water, peace and security, healthcare, education and so on, cannot be provided by 3D printers no matter how advanced it is.
The strange appeal of 3D printers in some quarters to me, is a sign we havent matured one bit. We still think our ‘problem’s will go away, if we all had those nifty new toy to make our own ‘stuff’ with. Its gets worse, if think about that for even a minute and realize that ‘traditional’ low tech manufacturing(ie 100 years ago), even then was more than capable of flooding and saturating consumer markets with mass produced goods quite easily. No 3D or computers required. Market saturation and overproduction was one of the primary culprits of the great depression-and they did it all without a single digital or analogue computer anywhere in sight. One can only imagine what a garbage dump the world would become if the world was filled with 3D printers that anyone could figure out how to operate. Let alone figure out where all the raw materials to run them 24/7 would come like others mentioned above.
No wonder this civiliaztion is so F%^ked up. Always trying to ‘fix’ the wrong problem with the wrong ‘solution’.
Makati1 on Tue, 22nd Apr 2014 5:56 am
BTW: I have been watching “Time Team” on YouTube. One of the shows had a man make a frying pan out of baked mud. THAT is real cheap production. All it takes is the proper clay, some animal dung, a mud built kiln, wood and some time.
No ‘printer’ hooked to an electrical system powered by natural gas requiring millions of people and parts to keep it going. Just find some clay, some wood, and the skills of a man of the first century AD.
J-Gav on Tue, 22nd Apr 2014 10:54 am
… and the cow jumped over the moon.