Random thoughts occurred to me the other day, which led to some tweets:
3D food printers are a thing. Wire that up with some hooks and you could get a real cookie when your tests pass.
— Jason Doucette (@jasondoucette) February 9, 2015
Which had nothing to do with today’s topic, but led to this:
Of course, break the build and the hook triggers a job on the 3D steaming pile of poop printer.
— Jason Doucette (@jasondoucette) February 9, 2015
And then I went back to work… for about 5 minutes. Then I realized I’d just been Irresponsible Internet Guy. Does a 3D steaming pile of poop printer exist, beyond the model that comes standard in humans, or did I just inspire people to do something that can’t be done yet?
A quick google search led me to this article – “Scientists Are 3D Printing Poop Now–You Know, For Science.” Which sounded exciting, but when I clicked through to the source, it turns out scientists just got an artist to cast some poop-shaped resin models, which I guess means Michelangelo used 3D printing too? But anyway, not a 3D printer that makes poop, or a printer that prints things out of poop. The next closest thing was something about an artist that used a 3D printer to make moulds that he’d put poop into to make sculptures, because art, but again, not quite what I’m looking for. (And that’s “looking for” in a very context-specific sense.)
But here’s the thing that came to mind during this process – sure, there may not be such a machine now, but we’ve entered the era where the mere act of Googling for something starts a process that will inevitably bring it into being. I’m not saying Google’s doing something in their Google X division to do something to fix searches that don’t return results by actually inventing things (though who knows, maybe they are,) but this is more of a quasi-woo-woo morphic fields thing that I’m calling the law of printable poop, because if someone’s already written this out their name won’t be as catchy as that:
The time between searching for something that doesn’t exist and that thing becoming a reality is decreasing
I could probably make that sound more sciencey by using a work like exponentially or suggesting a rate, but I have no real data to support this. Just know that a poop printer is coming, because I looked for one.