Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
One of my favorite parts of the story is CandyFab's testing process. To test
the precision and movement of the heat gun, Edman and Oskay placed a piece
of bread under the gun, on the print bed. Its inventors knew they had succeeded
when the CandyFab's heat gun slowly toasted the phrase used by worldwide by
software developers when they create a new application, “Hello World.”
Feeding the quantiied self
Precision food printers are the ideal output device for a era where diet, health and
medicine are increasingly driven by data. Low-cost sensors, online assessment
tools, low-cost DNA testing, and greatly improving medical diagnostic tests have
paved the way for a new movement in bodily awareness, the Quantiied Self or
“self-knowledge through numbers.” 3D printed food cartridges could be a food
delivery vehicle for the growing numbers of people who count, log and analyze
every biometric they capture.
Our bodies are the target of increasingly more sophisticated data collection.
Quantiied Self enthusiasts strap monitoring devices to themselves. They track
how far they walk, their heartbeat, weight, calories burned, and how well they
have slept. Imagine this emerging world of biometric data, combined with
personalized medical care, combined with a home-scale, digitally controlled
food printer.
It's easy to imagine a medical 3D printer fabricating the future version of
granola or pharmaceutically-enhanced candy bars. The printer could be even
more responsive than that, however. A kitchen 3D printer could be updated
by the hour on its owner's medical issues. It could use its digital intelligence
to mix and blend raw ingredients to print out meals specially tailored for
clients' daily needs.
For most of human history, monitoring one's biometrics has been a fairly
primitive process. People count their pulse, their breath rate, examine the
surface of the tongue or the appearance and smell of their bodily waste. Now
new medical technologies enable people outside the medical establishment
to track and monitor, even predict, what's going on in their bodies. Other
ields have been transformed by growing amounts of available data, comput-
ing power and the Internet. People can predict and manage non-intuitive
causalities between, say, their sleep patterns the week before and a slide into
depression at the end of the week.
