Some of the questions that experts will raise and try to answer during this afternoon's STOA workshop relate to crowdsourcing and 3D printing, but what exactly are they?
Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people - particularly from the online community. Crowd-funding on the other hand is the funding of a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via sites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. Thanks to rapid developments in 3D printing, it is now possible to build cheaper objects using much less material possessing physical properties impossible to obtain otherwise. Should 3D printing technology continue to develop it will be possible to print objects in 3D form "just in time" and "locally" using digital designs co-created by many users, and downloaded from the internet. Labour, transport and storage costs could be reduced dramatically.
The long term combination of all these technologies has the potential to revolutionise industry and the global economy. To find out more, tune into STOA's hearing on the matter from 14.00 CET on 27 January.
REF. : 20150126STO15019
