Now, let's take a closer look at 3-D printing technology.
Now, it's made headlines this week after that shocking announcement from a Texas-based company called Defense Distributed.
It claims that it has successfully fired the world's first gun that was made using a 3-D printer.
Now, this video posted on the group's Web site appears to show the weapon being fired and a Forbes writer witnessed the event.
So, what exactly is 3-D printing?
Well, instead of using ink like regular printers, 3-D printers use materials like plastic.
They take a digital image that you can create using modeling software on a computer,
and then print it out by building up layer on layer of material to create complex solid objects.
Now, car parts, prosthetic limbs, even human tissue had been 3-D printed by manufacturers and doctors who have been using this technique for decades.
And thanks to cheaper 3-D printer models, the technology is now available to anyone with around $1,000 to spare.
And for more, let's bring in our regular contributor, a senior editor at the NewYorker.com, Nicolas Thompson, who joins us live from New York.
And Nick, let's back up a bit.
For years now, product designers have been using 3-D printers for prototyping, right?
Absolutely. I mean, people who design houses, for example, have been using 3-D printers for years.
People who design airplanes, people who design any sort of complex system --
the precision that 3-D printing allows and the ability to have flexible designs to change and to say,
"Wait, what if I make this part slightly differently, what will it look like?"
-- they've been the early adopters of 3-D printing. They've pushed this technology forward,
and they've helped push it from something on the... you know, something minor, something on the fringes, to something that's now becoming ever more mainstream.
It's gonna change a lot of manufacturing.
There are certain things for mass production, for example, where 3-D printing doesn't work.
3-D printing doesn't really give you great economies of scale. You have to do the same thing each time.
Injection molds give you great economies of scale.
So there are lots of things where huge companies will still make them in huge factories using the traditional methods.
However, for small intricate things, it's gonna become vastly, vastly more efficient.
And it's gonna shake up industries, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
So let's talk about jewelry for a second.
It's great, right, because you can design your own things. Somebody in their own house could make their own jewelry.
Suddenly, you have all these start-ups.
But there's also this problem where you see an earring you really like and you can rip it off,
so it suddenly makes IP much harder to protect.
So there's legal concerns with possible IP theft. But there's also something else.
And going back to that printed gun, that 3-D printed gun, it's leading to a lot of worries in Congress.
So should 3-D printing be regulated?
That's an extremely hard question, right.
So we do have a 3-D printed gun, and there's a whole community of people who believe that in the era of bitcoin and 3-D printers, you know,
we'll be able to [be] self-sufficient anarchists.
And you don't really want to encourage or enable that crowd, but what happens when you start to regulate it?
Well, you get a whole bunch of problems. It's very hard for Congress to regulate an emerging, fast-changing technology.
It's also something there... it's very important to the United States to be strong in 3-D printing, right.
China is becoming very... you know, growing very quickly in 3-D printing.
There is a story in The Economist about 3-D printed airplane parts in China right now.
Barack Obama in the State of the Union mentioned 3-D printing as something where he sees real hope for America.
So, you don't want to cut if off with intrusive regulation,
but you do want to make sure that you protect intellectual property and you prevent the creation of terrible things like homemade weapons that can't be regulated.
So, very tough choices for Congress right now.