Contest: what 3D-printed augmentations should future humans sport?

Joris Peels sez, "Why not give humans 3D printed titanium teeth? Inspired by Max Barry's book Machine Man, we're exploring a future where people will turn to 3D printed titanium elective implants to add functionality to themselves or improve their looks. We want to challenge a designer or engineer to imagine an inspiring and provocative titanium 3D printed implant that will help people visualize a 3D printed future. The contest will be judged by Max Barry, bio robotics & 3D printing researcher Hob Lipson and Scott Summit."

i.materialise Machine Man Human Augmentation Design Challenge (Thanks, Joris, via Submitterator!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

DIY dentistry. Because there are many, many people who live with painful cases of dental caries but cannot afford to see a dentist, even to have that tooth pulled.
Gronk

I suggest Mr. Peels has a talk with an oral surgeon concerning the limits of endosseous tooth implants and then reconsider this idea.
Snig

Take MRI’s of their hips or knees at a young age, then have replacements ready to go decades later.
bcsizemo

I think someone has been watching too much X-Men/Wolverine….
Anonymous

I only do eyes.
TEKNA2007

Steely Dan, duh.
Elece

I think obviously the first implants will relate to the porn industry. Multipenis is the future!
Jamie Sue

This is crazy, but I would LOVE titanium fingernails of a a reasonable length if I was ASSURED I’d never have to deal with my real ones again. Terrible, never growing, tearing, chipping, cracking things…
Anonymous

Great idea. First tattoos, now titanium. Good. Create a whole population of people with significant constraints for most medical imaging technologies. MRI, in particular, has real problems with implanted metal (even titanium), and tattoo dyes. But also CT, plain film, and even ultrasound have problems.
Karnuvap

I have always thought that it would be cool to have a tiny circular saw blade (fully motorised, of course) instead of my index fingernail.
Never again the problem of getting into those hard plasic blister packs – just activate and zzrrrp! sliced around the edge nicely.
Removing cable ties and that plastic band around the photocopy paper box would be a snip too.
- peterbruells
  
  Personally, if I were a woman, I’d run very very far before I’d date you.
darth_schmoo

Three words: Swiss Army Nose.
Don

A powered exoskeleton might be nice to have when I’ve got really heavy lifting to do, but if I can’t take it off afterwards I don’t want one. Probably not in the spirit of the contest.

An internal, encrypted data storage device might be handy. But Moore’s Law would make me unwilling to buy now, knowing it would require surgery to upgrade.
Anonymous

We’re forgetting that the human body already is a very sophisticated nano-3d printer…
dculberson

Having had a lot of dental work done in the past, the thought of titanium teeth horrifies me. When i was younger it would have sounded awesome, but now that I know it would involve destroying any natural teeth you have left (since they’re so much harder), cutting yourself constantly, infections, etc., I realize it’s just not a good idea. For the same reason that getting dentures isn’t usually done at the election of a person with healthy teeth.
rob_cornelius

I seem to remember in Richard Morgans excellent book Altered Carbon the main character temporarily inhabits a “combat chassis” body with all titanium bones, artificial muscle fibres and carbon fibre tendons and ligaments to join it all together.

I want one of those, especially with the augmented nervous system that gives you the reaction times of a scalded cat.

On a related note my farther used to work in the aircraft industry as a machinist before he retired. The company he worked on had a side line in making titanium hip joints for the NHS as they had some of the most highly skilled machinists in the country and the right machine tools for the job. He actually got to make his personal new hip joint when his needed replacing just before he retired.
dainel

Hooks that come out of the shoulder blades, at the back, slight upwards.

I wouldn’t need beds anymore. I could just sleep by hanging off matching pegs on the wall. If everyone had them, buses, trains, and planes could be more efficient. You wouldn’t need seats.

And these could be used to carry heavy loads. Don’t have to worry about bag straps biting into your shoulders.
- Don
  
  If you’re carrying a heavy load on your shoulders, your bag is poorly designed. It should transfer the weight to your hips.
  
  But if I’m going to be carrying more stuff on my existing, biological, half-shot-already knees, I don’t see the advantage.
bigomega73

I vote for Aperature Science Fall Boots, please!
Eric Hunting

This notion relates to that suggestion last year of economizing on missions to Mars by making them one-way settlement missions. Logically, taking on such a mission might mean being subject to a number of pre-emptive surgical procedures intended to reduce one’s need for future medical care. For instance, pre-emptive appendectomy. Replacement of natural teeth with implants. Anything that might prevent common health problems that develop with age from becoming life-threatening crisis in the absence of full-blown medical services. So what sort of augmentation like this might prospective space travelers commonly employ? (well, at least until the advent of medical nanobot colonies as a general solution to Space Wasting and radiation exposure countermeasures)
Amelia_G

Rib jewelry that says “FAWK TSA” with a lot of curlicues
Amelia_G

But seriously, I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be better external and doffable.
tylerkaraszewski

Personally, when discussing “augmentations” to my own body, the particular manufacturing process used to build them comes *way* down the list of important considerations.

“What hand-stitched safety equipment should we put on the first manned spacecraft to Mars?”

“hand-stitched” is not the important part of that sentence.
- Ito Kagehisa
  
  Well, spacesuits do have hand-stitched components. Or at least they did the last time I visited ILC, probably ten years ago, er, no, I guess 16 years ago. Maybe they’ve got a costly, high maintenance machine to do the job now.
  - tylerkaraszewski
    
    You seem to have missed my point entirely.
    - Ito Kagehisa
      
      No, I understood, and I did not mean to trivialize your point at all. But while I agree that “hand stitched” may not have been the most important part of your sentence, it was still the most interesting part. It leads into a discovery process – there are things that are best made by hand, what are those things in the context of martian safety equipment? – that is much more interesting to me than a simple cargo manifest.
benher

The S & M possibilities are endless. Bodyhacks ahoyhoy!
Ito Kagehisa

Antennas. Rectractable antennas, either running in an array down the spinal column (in tidy wedgelike housings, so that one can sit comfortably while they are retracted), or protruding from the forearms (in either a positionable or swept back configuration), or in a stubby fin set into the top of the skull.

These antennae will be desirable in order to enhance the constant linkage that our embedded net links will require. Aquatic mods will prefer the spinal array, while terrestrials are more likely to favor the forearm or skull-top configuration.
- Ito Kagehisa
  
  Uhm, retractable not rectractable. I’m not sure what rectractable means!
  
  You’d 3-d print them so they could be easily replaced – after all, you’d want an antenna to snap off rather than inflicting damage on your body or the control mechanism. Cheap, trivially replaceable 3d-printed antennas.
  
  “Honey, print me out three of the 2.4 Ghz mid-range whips, would you? That knucklehead George fell down the stairs at work today and knocked me into the railing, I’m only showing two bars on wifi!”
- Don
  
  If I get to control what runs on the associated digital radio, hell yeah.
  - Ito Kagehisa
    
    And you could be your own radio station, for that matter; once you’ve got a petabyte of music in a dime-sized cartridge behind your ear, why not share?
    - Don
      
      Sharing data would be cool. Being a walking wireless access point, or being a walking wireless internet router for some kind of pervasive network, would be cooler still. But I gotta have access to the off switch or it’s no deal.
Lobster

Those look useful. For science.

You monster.