Home Printing (Replication)

In The Lion of God, we are introduced to the idea of 3D home printers that can make complicated objects. The first such reference is to printing a DVD-ROM unit for a personal computer. The second reference is a longer riff about Ariela Wolff's first shipsuit (the Daz3D 3RFD Suit by Chungdan), followed by a mention that Ariela's red beret was also made on a printer.

I was not thinking of Star Trek replicators when I came up with this concept. More to the point, George O. Smith had a couple of Venus Equilateral stories that discussed replication and how it would destroy value, and how society managed to put a patch on that. "Pandora's Millions" specifically, but also the story that precedes it, "Special Delivery".

So I had Smith in mind when I came up with the 3D home printers that could take a catalog item and print it for you right there at home, without having to go physically to the store and buy it (in the Timelines universe, this grew out of the SARS-CoV-2 plandemic). The only thing that had to be delivered was "materials". And for something like clothing, you'd have your measurements taken by some sort of attachment to the machine, and they'd be saved in the system.

My thought was you'd pay each time you made a copy of whatever it was, though I suppose there could be subscriptions where you'd buy a consumable product and just pay a royalty or something each time you remade it. To date, the latter has not been fully-developed.

But I did think carefully about how money would be handled by a home printer -- and decided that way down in low-level code, there would be algorithms to detect if you were trying to duplicate either paper fiat money or the gold dollar-denominated coins that came in later. In either of those cases, the machine would shut down hard and send notifications to the Treasury Department, which would result in a couple of nice men showing up at your door to fit you with a nice pair of stainless-steel bracelets for your visit to the local magistrate.

Which makes assumptions that nobody would try to meddle with the low-level code; most probably would not, because there would be too much chance of bricking your Very Expensive printer.

And with the gold coins, it's problematic. In later years Treasury doesn't even try to prevent the counterfeiting of its gold coins, for a couple of reasons: a) Easy to detect, by weight if nothing else, and b) "It says 'The United States of America' on it, so even if it's lightweight, the gold content still accrues to the wealth of the nation, so who cares?" This is briefly discussed by Delaney Wolff Fox in A Dragon in the Foie Gras, but more extensively at this link.

Finally, it should be noted that the printers are actually not Very Expensive; just like inkjet printers, they sell you the printer cheap and see you coming on the materials for it. (This is also mentioned by John Wolff in his discussion with Ariela about the shipsuit.)

In the (as yet unreleased) In the Cherry Blossom's Shade, we find out that, however cool replication may be in the beginning, "bespoke" is the word in the 23rd Century:

"So wait," said Akako, thoughtfully. "I thought everybody in this timeline got their clothing printed.  What do you need with dress shops full of dresses?"

"You still can print clothing," affirmed Karla. "But if you want really nice clothing, that's been hand-sewn, or hand-embroidered, or is really custom-fitted, you still go to a store.  And more and more, that's what people do.  They want clothing that doesn't scream, 'I printed this at home.'  And printers anymore are getting used for things you need in a hurry."

"So, bespoke clothing is the way to go, now?" pressed Akako.

"Sure.  Men's suits, for instance.  The Hong Kong custom tailors still do mad business in the States, even though most of their work is really done in Vietnamese or Malaysian workshops.  Every businessman worth his salt has at least one English-style bespoke three-piece suit.  And you'll notice, men's hats are back in style."

Indeed, most of the well-dressed men in the store were wearing 1950's-style fedoras and overcoats.