The Future of 3D Printing

[matthewchakov]

Hello,

My name is Matt and I am doing a project on the Future of 3D Printing, I decided to come to this forum because many of you are experts on the subjects, I would appreciate if you helped me out and answered as many or as few questions as you want, thanks!

1. How will three dimensional printing affect a global society in both the near and distant future?
2. How much do you expect the price of three dimensional printers to go down over the next five years? Ten years? Hundred years?
3. Do you see three dimensional printing affecting different parts of the world dis-proportionally?
4. What advancements in three dimensional printing are to be made over the next decade?
5. What is the easiest possible way to explain three dimensional printing?
6. What is your opinion on printing anything, should there be a restriction on what a person could print?
7. Do you know a place where i could rent a 3D Printer?

[RobH2]

I have a suggestion for you that might help you with your project. I doubt that many people will take the time to answer all of those questions in depth. Some of them will require more than a few sentences to answer. I'm sure you've searched but there are a lot of articles online from Forbes, Harvard Business School and others who speculate about your first set of questions. They have their finger on the "future" pulse better than a lot of we users most likely. I'm seeing a "Tron" analogy there but I digress...

What you might find useful is to do a Web Survey. There are a number of sites that allow you to create one. I think that Google even has a tool for doing it. People will be more receptive to answering question on a quick survey, especially if you already come up with the top 5 or 6 plausible answers. Then what you'll be doing is seeing how many people lean a certain way.

We can never predict the future so if one person emphatically says that infact "yes," the price will go down in 100-years doesn't mean much as a researcher. But if 250 people agree that it will and go down and 2 people say that it won't, then you now have some useful info.

So, I'd make this a survey and post the link here. There are a number of surveys on this forum and if you search you can find them and see what I'm talking about.

Good luck with your research.