Would You Rather: Have a 3D printer that makes anything or Have a teleporter for objects?
Would you rather Have a 3D printer that makes anything or Have a teleporter for objects? We already live in a world of accelerating tech change. "Have a 3D printer that makes anything" or "Have a teleporter for objects" asks how far you would go. The first option, "Have a 3D printer that makes anything", has a certain appeal that is worth unpacking. It promises something — a capability, a freedom, a knowledge — that most people go their whole lives without. But the promise is not free. Every gain in one dimension requires a corresponding sacrifice elsewhere, and the technology category tends to make those sacrifices particularly vivid. You would have to live with the consequences every single day. And then there is "Have a teleporter for objects". Not better, not worse — just different in ways that matter. This option asks you to give up something specific, and the specificity is what makes it hard. Generic sacrifices are easy to agree to in theory. But "Have a teleporter for objects" names exactly what you would lose, and that precision is uncomfortable. In the technology category, this kind of discomfort is the whole point. The real tension here is not between "Have a 3D printer that makes anything" and "Have a teleporter for objects" as isolated options. It is between two different visions of who you want to be. Our community has voted on this 8,117 times, and the.