Some futuristic technologies belong to a distant time that is hard for most to imagine in palpable terms. In the case of 3D printing, however, any citizen can easily grasp the stakes by simply... Show More

Some futuristic technologies belong to a distant time that is hard for most to imagine in palpable terms. In the case of 3D printing, however, any citizen can easily grasp the stakes by simply watching a brief video (). The 3D printer, whose ancestry can be traced to factory innovations of the 1980s, provides a method of assembling objects piece by piece: a kind of less precise nanotechnology for the macro-level. Within a decade humans might be able to print functional body parts, bringing an end to the grisly waits for donated organs and the even more grisly international organ trafficking rings. Some believe that the “killer app” for 3D printing will be found in the printing of food, perhaps replacing single-site restaurants with a home library of Platonic forms of gourmet cuisine. Still others celebrate or fear the printing of assault rifles on a desktop, whether by right-wing citizens, convicted felons, or the mentally ill. One can expect the easy availability, in residential privacy, of all manner of benign and malignant objects, transforming economic structures, social life, and domestic security in roughly fifteen to twenty years.

The additive manufacturing (or the popular 3D printing) is relatively new technology which opens new spaces for entrepreneurial imagination and promises next stage of the industrial revolution. It... Show More

The additive manufacturing (or the popular 3D printing) is relatively new technology which opens new spaces for entrepreneurial imagination and promises next stage of the industrial revolution. It is creating three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The printer transforms the file into a material object layer by layer, using different raw materials. Today, the additive manufacturing is successfully used in architecture, medicine and healthcare, light and heavy industries, education, etc. The paper analyses the roles of actors in manufacturing the objects. It starts with the Heideggerian questioning of technology (), searching for the causes of bringing into appearance of the 3D model. According to Heideggerian analysis the technology is represented as an ‘unveiling of the truth'. The paper suggests that the old understanding of matter as a thing-in-itself should be replaced by a new, flexible, fluid, concept of matter, which is more or less manipulable. The matter is no more an occasion for object's taking place. On the other hand, it seems 3D printing technology is reduced to mere means; a simple intermediary, a copier of ideas. From that perspective the paper questioning the problem of action in ANT and search how action and interaction is distributed and how actors constitutes themselves as well as their actor-world.

This essay proposes that humans are in the midst of a cultural shift from the Industrial Age to an Ecological Era, which demands that one re-conceptualize the world and operate within it... Show More

This essay proposes that humans are in the midst of a cultural shift from the Industrial Age to an Ecological Era, which demands that one re-conceptualize the world and operate within it differently. It discusses the opportunities raised by Actor Network Theory (ANT) in helping one navigate the transition from an object-centred view of reality, towards one that also engages with process-oriented concepts. In particular, the impact of the convergence of these worldviews on technological innovation is explored through recognising a different material framework that engages with nonlinear systems. ANT offers a unique opportunity to deal with matter at far from equilibrium through the notion of assemblages, which act as a new kind of operating system that behaves in remarkably lifelike ways. Empirical evidence is provided for such an ANT-based, production platform through laboratory findings in an emerging field of computation called ‘natural' computing. A range of models and prototypes are discussed. The resultant lifelike technologies require unique infrastructures that facilitate the movement of elemental fabrics (earth, air, heat, water). While much evidence for their existence is propositional and qualitative, as they are in their earliest stages of development, these lifelike technologies have the potential to radically alter the impact of human development and transform it from being harmful to beneficial to the environment.

The paper applies ANT approach in studying the new space entrepreneurship. The paper tests the ability of ANT to account for the impressive processes of shaking the old government-lead model of... Show More

The paper applies ANT approach in studying the new space entrepreneurship. The paper tests the ability of ANT to account for the impressive processes of shaking the old government-lead model of rocked design and use that originated in the late 1930s and which is still dominants in many countries. Under this model the space technology was carried out via publicly funded (or state-owned) research, development and manufacturing organizations and/or as highly regulated large corporate businesses; it never entered the phase of large-scale mass industrial manufacturing and the economies of scale and scope never played a significant role under this model. Together with severe safety requirements this resulted in the extremely high cost of development and manufacturing. The situation radically changed in the beginning of this century, when a number of entrepreneurs – most of which with multimillion fortunes from successful IT businesses – entered the space industry bringing with them quite a different model of space technology development. Applying the conceptual framework developed in two well-known ANT studies – those of John Law on Portuguese long-distance sea travel and Michel Callon analysis of the states of socio-technical (or techno-economic) networks, the paper demonstrates their usefulness and heuristic potential in analyzing the processes that are currently going on in high-tech fields such as space rocket technology. It identified two specific problems the ANT ignores – the asymmetrically important role of human agents at the earlier stage of actor-networks emergence and development, and the problem of profound, if not radical, changes in already stabilized actor-networks, thus pointing of possible existence of their third state, that is different both from the emerging and stabilized ones.