The industrial revolution has yet to end in failure
The above video from Youtube discusses how improvement enables. Manufacturing technique improves, cost, waste, effort and materials reduce, efficiency improves.
It is not difficult to see how in the future even large and materials complex parts can be 3D printed. Something like this mega diesel engine would be the ultimate, perhaps, to 3D print with the complexity of alloys to consider also: https://youtu.be/w4uMX5mWAF4 https://youtu.be/Smz5pzzbb_I
But, the industrial revolution and innovation have many coal faces, to use old terminology. We are driving away at some but others are flagging behind. We used to look at chemicals we had essentially for free as by-products and develop products from those or specifically to use those and one of the reasons was so that we did not have to figure other destructive ways to get rid of them. Look at Windex (now with no ammonia?!) for example. And, we have huge stockpiles of recyclables that we get for free as a byproduct of everything that we produce but remarkably we are light on ideas for the consumption of that resource. We need to improve.
Ultimately, the greatest failure of the industrial revolution is if it results in our destruction. Yes, we have the technological revolution happening also over the top of that and the artificial intelligence revolution beginning on top of that but like sheets of dis-similar liquid pouring out over the top of each other in layers making up our history and grinding and bending our culture into shape the earlier revolutions continue. Look at the revolution of religion, it is nowhere near done.
When we have problems, if we cannot innovate then we fail. Our outputs require innovation, our recyclables require innovation and our manufacturing requires innovation. These need to develop quite some for man and his habitat to be suitable for intergalactic transport.
When we can 3D Print a full production quality mega diesel, electron shields, fusion pellets, fuel rods, armour repulsion cathodes, lithium batteries and so many more things then we may be ready.
Here’s to science; an imperfect, improving. A study of.
-HRjJ