Within three years, any five year-old will be able to design and make a robot like this, designed specifically to rip the heads off Barbie dolls.

I have a confession to make: I am the Google+ user. You knew it had to be somebody, and thought it might even be someone you knew, and turns out, I’m that guy.

In my defense, I don’t use it in anything like a “social” way (that’d be like talking to yourself on the subway). When I see something of interest on the internets, I send it to my own private stream at Google+, like taking a note. It makes me feel hip because I’m using The Cloud.

But it’s mostly just me on there, along with some snake oil salesmen blathering about how to use Google+ for your business, and Google employees like former CEO and current Chief-“Why the Fuck are You Suing/Investigating Us Now, Too?”-Ambassador of Non-evil, Eric Schmidt.

As I do anyone whose posts I can follow, I consider Eric a close personal friend, and today he let me know about something really interesting.

The end of humanity.

More specifically, the really cool capitalistic side of it. Here’s what Eric sent to me:

An amazing project from MIT, Harvard and Penn aims to make print-on-demand robots a reality for the average person by the end of the decade. This is what the future will look like.”

And then this link to MIT’s site. To summarize, MIT is spearheading a project to develop “a desktop technology that would make it possible for the average person to design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours.” Project leader and principal investigator MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Professor Daniela Rus, is quoted as saying, “We believe that it has the potential to transform manufacturing and to democratize access to robots.” According to the MIT article:

Researchers hope to create a platform that would allow an individual to identify a household problem that needs assistance; then head to a local printing store to select a blueprint, from a library of robotic designs; and then customize an easy-to-use robotic device that could solve the problem. Within 24 hours, the robot would be printed, assembled, fully programmed and ready for action.”

Yes, we’ll be able to “print” our own robots, designed to do what we want them to do.

Of course this means we’re all going to die, but, admit it, this is so much cooler than the Matrix movie bullshit way you thought robots would end up killing us all.

Thomson Titanium Handlebar

In less grim manufacturing news, I hope I get to see more of Thomson’s suddenly expanding line of products. Bikerumor.com mentioned these again today, and what appears to be the reality of some new Thomson components is pretty exciting stuff. Like a lot of people searching for bolt on and forget bike parts, I’ve been a fan of Thomson stuff for a whole bunch of years. It’s sort of wonderful beyond words to see them potentially expanding not only their level of technology (dropper seatposts!), but materials (carbon road bar!). And they’re going to try to keep production in house as completely as possible? This might be the first shots in a revolution of genuine high-quality bike parts that don’t look like they came out of the same factory making Gummi Bears and wall clocks for Wal-Mart.

I just hope the insta-bots let me live long enough to see it.