Cyber Heroes

Xiangshan truly believes that additive manufacturing/3D printing can change the landscape of human industry.

The human industrial structure will inevitably move towards "agglomeration", and monopoly will be very easy to emerge. The reason is because of "mass production".

The benefits of mass production are simply too great.

When human resources, capital, information, technology, and economic entities gather in a region, they can produce the special effect of "1+1\u003e2". As the scale of the production organization increases, all production lines can share the technology provided by one R\u0026D organization, which evens out R\u0026D costs. When purchasing materials on a large scale, prices can also be lowered.

In short, there are many benefits.

Of course, there is another point - a large number of manpower can achieve specialization and division of labor, improve efficiency, and therefore reduce costs.

Adam Smith completed the study of "division of labor" in economics, and the mathematician Charles Babbage developed it further. Eventually, in the hands of Henry Ford, the “God of the Brave New World,” this system evolved into its final form—the assembly line.

Babbage proposed from a scientific perspective that division of labor can reduce the skills possessed by each worker. This saves workers the time to learn new skills, saves the consumption of the employee learning process, saves the time of switching from one process to another, and saves the time required to change tools. In this way, a worker only needs to repeat simple labor to quickly improve his labor skill proficiency.

But Mr. Babbage may not have anticipated how Henry Ford would implement this theory.

The big capitalist Ford divided the production of the Model T into a total of 7882 different processes. Among them, 949 require "strong, well-conditioned male workers" and 3,338 require "general manual workers"; other processes can be completed by "women or older teenagers"; and "workers without legs can be To perform 670 of the processes, a worker with one leg can do 2,637, a person with no hands can do 2, a person with one hand can do 715, and a blind man can do 10."

Ah, of course, there is one thing in particular that should not be forgotten.

Mr. Babbage was an expert in machinery. Before the electrical age, the mathematician was planning to build "machines that could calculate" and "machines that could operate automatically."

Therefore, Babbage also made a very important point - since the tasks of a single worker become simpler, "after the division of labor, it is easier to design more refined and practical tools and machines, thereby increasing labor productivity."

It was not that machines caused mass production, but that humans discovered that "mass production" was very easy to profit from, so they designed industrial machines according to the requirements of mass production.

Everything in the modern factory system revolves around the theme of "mass production". Henry Ford's disciples practiced Babbage's theories in the most brutal way.

Even this form of labor will completely destroy the value of workers.

Workers don’t need to know what they’re doing, they just rely on muscle memory to perform repetitive tasks. Therefore, it is difficult for him to realize the significance of his work. This is simply killing workers' enthusiasm for work and cutting off the growth channels for their labor skills.

Until a machine completely replaces the worker's job.

Xiangshan thinks so.

Therefore, although he felt that Yawgmoth's argumentation process was a bit jumpy, the concept of "machines should be publicly owned" was really eye-catching.

People should not exploit people, but people can exploit machines. Produced by machines and enjoyed by people - this is the most possible "beautiful future" that can be realized in imagination. Machines free people from heavy repetitive labor. Humans can improve themselves through learning, express themselves through creation, and maintain themselves through entertainment.

Of course, the premise of all this must be that "everyone can obtain what is produced by machines" and "the goals of machine production must be grasped by the public."

But this is not easy, because as long as the "scale effect" exists, industrial agglomeration, totalitarianism, monopoly, overproduction, and major crises will inevitably be created continuously.

Xiangshan believes that as long as "centralized production" still has advantages, those problems are inevitable.

However, 3D printing does have some such potential.

Production lines are all specialized. A production line that produces screws may not be able to produce nuts. Because the two products require different materials, molds, lathes, etc. If a production line produces both screws and nuts, it is necessary to switch part of the production equipment while switching products.

At this time, it is better to build two production lines.

Therefore, materials are often transported from the smelting plant to production lines in different places, and then transported to the destination through various complex logistics.

But 3D printing is different. If the technology were more mature, it should be possible to make anything from metal roughly processed by small smelting equipment.

For 3D printing, the cost of production is only model data, raw materials and smelting costs. Excludes mold, machine and material losses. After the ore is roughly processed, it does not need to flow to a processing plant, but can be transported directly to consumers.

At this moment, Xiangshan firmly believes that 3D printing technology can completely change the industrial landscape.

Because this is not a technology designed "for centralized production."

If combined with technologies such as automatic assembly...

If Ford is the god of capitalism and the assembly line symbolizes the glory of capitalist mass production, then maybe additive construction is a technology more suitable for the "kingdom of freedom".

Xiangshan thinks so sincerely.

Of course, Xiangshan originally didn't think he could shake the existing system in his lifetime. Because today's industry is entirely based on assembly line industry.

His ambition is actually equivalent to reopening a completely different technology tree.

However, opposite to this new technology tree is a technology tree that has already monopolized all resources.

Xiangshan didn't think he could succeed.

However, with the arrival of Ogun, things changed a little bit.

The "Orunmila Project" shows an "additive construction" technology tree.

It is certain that aliens have mastered similar technologies and used them in the aerospace industry.

This is a signal.

Xiangshan felt that maybe he should work harder.

No matter what direction he takes, he must find allies in academia—friends willing to help him pursue this ideal.

At this moment, Xiangshan felt that Yawgmoth Voigt was a very good person.