4D Printing, Volume 1

Preamble4D Printing, Between the Why(s) and the How(s)

All techniques form industries and trades. On the whole: techniques, industries and trades, form the technical system of a society. (Mauss 1947)

The human brain does not like complexity […]. Innovation, like any change of habit is a new complexity to manage. (Leblanc 2017)

The universal triumph of science will ensure the maximum happiness and morality for mankind. (Berthelot 1897)

P.1. Introduction

If the human condition consists of the fact that Man is a conditioned being for whom everything, whether given or manufactured, immediately becomes a condition of his subsequent existence, Man “adapts” to an environment of [tools and then] machines from the moment he invents them. [The most refined tool remains at the service of the hand, which it can neither guide nor replace. The most primitive machine guides bodily labor and eventually replaces it altogether. (Arendt 1968)

Indeed, the line between the agreement and rejection of a technology depends on whether it is seen as neutral or value-laden, or simply symbolic. What narrative does it tell, because “technological development transforms the meaning of what is human” (Heidegger 2003)?

To innovate the ship is to innovate the shipwreck; to invent the steam engine, the locomotive, is to invent the railway catastrophe […] each period of technical evolution bringing, with its batch of instruments, of machines, the appearance of specific accidents, revealing the ‘negative’ ...