Disruption on Demand
The advent of 3D printing, a technology that will allow you to print your own office furniture – in your office – threatens to overturn the whole basis of the global economy. When you can make anything, anywhere, anytime then the advantage of a pool of low cost labour, no matter how well trained, is vastly reduced. Indeed, capital, knowledge and basic commodities become the only constraints on world markets: the death of distance is nearly complete.
Such disruptive advances in technology occur from time to time and have the power to change pretty much everything. Yet the study of finance regards these events as exogenous: external to the economy and therefore outside of its purview. This is like arguing that medicine shouldn’t take biological research into account in developing treatments: all we need is a better leech. It's just not true: echnology and economics are linked at the hip, whatever the theories tell us.
The advent of 3D printing, a technology that will allow you to print your own office furniture – in your office – threatens to overturn the whole basis of the global economy. When you can make anything, anywhere, anytime then the advantage of a pool of low cost labour, no matter how well trained, is vastly reduced. Indeed, capital, knowledge and basic commodities become the only constraints on world markets: the death of distance is nearly complete.
Such disruptive advances in technology occur from time to time and have the power to change pretty much everything. Yet the study of finance regards these events as exogenous: external to the economy and therefore outside of its purview. This is like arguing that medicine shouldn’t take biological research into account in developing treatments: all we need is a better leech. It's just not true: echnology and economics are linked at the hip, whatever the theories tell us.
