I received a lot of comments about my previous posting on the up and coming application of 3D printing to build new human organs. Here is another article on treehugger.com with more details and video.
Kinko's for Kidneys: 3D Printing Your Own Body Parts
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto
on 12.22.09
3D printing to order is a regular subject on TreeHugger; we love the idea of making things when you need them, where you need them. And soon you will be able to order up body parts, at a sort of Ponoko for pancreas. Now people sit on waiting lists, hooked up to expensive equipment while they wait for donors and fly body parts all over the world; soon you will order them up fresh and hot. Perhaps, like Philip K. Dick did, we might even call them artif-orgs.
There is some good explanation of the technique in this posting on SmartPlanet.
This stuff easily makes it onto my "What if the Impossible Isn't?" list for the year!
All of this adds to my conviction that the big change required to make the most difference in the world is to check and change our historic baselines and assumptions. To switch from thinking that we need to plan within the constraints of what we think is possible and increasingly design and strategize with the assumption that most anything IS possible, or soon will be. We need to be more imaginative, more creative, more demanding than ever in the increasingly unconstrained world of abundance which more and more of us are privileged to live within.
Think about it. What if the impossible isn't? What, if it were possible, and would have the most positive and profound affect on your profession, your world? What will you do when it is possible? Are you ready?
-- Wayne
Comments