“Fashion always combines a taste for imitation and a taste for change, conformism and individualism, an aspiration to melt into a social group and a desire to stand out, if only in the small details”. [SIM 03]
“It is thus important to study the nature of the final clientele’s expectations and their criteria for evaluating the quality of the service”. [ROU 03]
“Technologies […] not only produce instruments that transform our lives, they modify the reality around us, reorganize social life, the movement of which has been racing since the Industrial Revolution”. [KLE 11]
“Technology is then the projection or rather reflection surface on which an image appears, the characteristics of which send their image back to the human genius, to the development of sciences whose machines and processes are applications, to a socio-economic organization that determines its risks, even to the accomplishment of a fate sealed by a metaphysical ‘choice’ that founds the identity of the West”. [TIN 94]
“We learn from laws and the way of speaking about our slaves to better manage them. And thus, without even noticing it, we renounce our human qualities, our own laws. We dehumanize ourselves, we adopt the style of our technical slaves”. [GHE 74]
“Arthur Koestler was not far off when he described the behavior of certain scientific creators in comparing them to sleep-walkers, stumbling over major discoveries. But it is still necessary for the moment to be favorable and the mind prepared, and possibly for luck to come to your aid”. [DE 12]
“No authority decides what a good idea is”. [FEY 98]
“It is understood that France has always preferred a precise preparation of operations described by its past experiences – and the strict respect for the structured hierarchical instructions that result from them – to the awareness of changes and new realities, thus to the detriment of innovation”. [SER 11]
“The ability to imagine, or the imagination, consists of nothing more than the power that the soul has to form itself from the images of objects by producing a change in the fibers of this part of the brain, which can be called the primary part as it responds to every part of our body”. (Malebranche [MAL 75] quoted by Roquette [ROQ 07])
“Innovation is a novelty or significant change that is made in the political government against the use & rule of its constitution”. (Diderot & D’Alembert Encyclopédie [DID 74] according to Godin [GOD 15])
“Science, despite being factually plural, struggles to be experienced as a place for the expression of true pluralism”. [COU 15]
“It is possible to find exceptional situations for which this cloud of data has a ‘very special’ shape, different from what is ‘normally’ expected. The search for these ‘divergent’ situations must lead to interesting information about the internal structure of the unknown”. [THO 83]
In the imagination of researchers and engineers at the beginning, 3D printing/additive manufacturing is one of the methods of so-called “morphogenetic engineering” [DOU 13, MC 15, DOU 08, BOU 11, BOU 06, MUR 07, THO 89], which authorizes the production of material objects “through thought” (or based on mental conception) using a computer and a physical interface: the 3D printer.
For some, it would be rather natural to proceed with a work dedicated to additive manufacturing from the beginning, that is, by speaking of the origin of this concept and its evolution over time. However, it seemed more interesting to the author to show, through the use of a few examples, the potential of 3D techniques, from pratical realizations in different applicative fields to socio-economic modifications. Access to new forms of freedom in the creation of objects with very diverse ends likely constitutes, with the possibility of creating infeasible parts alternatively, strongly attractive major stakes to be taken into consideration in the all-around development of technology.
This bias thus allows value to be given to an emerging technology that still has not found all of its limits, to try to make the reader dream about new applicative fields, and to record the technology through a collective imaginary in new societal habits, all while reflecting on some constraints. It also allows factual information on the development of technological innovation in additive manufacturing to be added.
For Zeese and Flowers [ZEE 13], who based themselves on an older work from Moyer [MOY 87], the emergence of a technology follows eight steps. Established at the time to protest against nuclear power in an in-depth and scientific way, in 1987 the “Movement Action Plan” engaged reflection on our knowledge of the following elements, which must also be considered concerning additive manufacturing (while this is a matter of an attractive potential, as opposed to the problems of peacefully managing nuclear waste):
- – Phases 1–3: start of the technology, information to industrial environments, and first communication to the public based on the fact that the innovation produces objects that broaden the field of possibilities, creates a new reality, even properly invents it [GUÉ 15];
- – Phase 4: measurement of the technology’s attractiveness with potential openings; support from originals (the “makers” who will be mentioned below) who only imperfectly join the traditional and still current economic system; according to Chomsky and Herman [CHO 08], “the system perfectly adjusts to a certain degree of dissidence”, illustrating the fact that it is not monolithic and is open to innovation, but that this coexistence of ideas nevertheless remains boxed in; creation of a financially credible demand by playing on a form of economic system “tectonics”;
- – Phases 5–6: creation of “consistency” within the proposition (and thus of a widened market) with future forms of colonization; densification of the present moment for the profitability and appropriation of propositions, even prescriptions proposed by the “system” [TRA 15] allowing investment in the virtual world; “An impression ...
