Chris Fenton has written about building a strictly mechanical computer with 3D-printed parts, which he calls the Turbo-Entabulator: see http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-turbo-entabulator/, plus writeups eslewhere. (See other entries on his very interesting site, including the FIBIAC electromechanical computer.)
This makes me wonder whether non-electric computing may actually benefit from 3D printing. It may be possible eventually to 'print' very fine components like microtubes with minimal friction that could be used in nonE systems. Granted such systems would then still be at best semi-electric, since you can't 3D-manufacture the parts without electricity. But again, it may give us analogies of how to proceed in a genuinely nonE manner, if this seems like a good idea.
However, there is also the usual reservation that 3D printing or 'additive manufacturing' as the industry calls it, is an unevaluated technology, commercialized in the usual disregard of the Precautionary Principle, or any accounting of social, political, or ecological costs. This approach in the long-term will probably turn lots of people away from technological progress in general. Borrowing from Dune, we may eventually face the equivalent of the 'Butlerian Jihad' against computing systems, which would be a silly shame.
Proponents of tech must become hard-core proponents of rigorous full-cost accounting of the tech, or they risk the future of technology itself. They must insist upon fully funded adversarial science to investigate the downside of all big tech ventures before we OK them as a society. Even if we then go ahead with the tech, we need such research in order to come up with methods of mitigation.
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