This week, we heard two speakers, Dan Banach and Dot Silverman, who presented on the involvement the United Parcel Service has with 3D printing, and Biohacking respectively. Mr. Banach overall explained the reasoning behind why UPS is getting so involved in the 3D printing world; UPS is a delivery company, but also stores and delivers parts for certain companies in order to offer quick shipping. UPS has decided that 3D printing these parts is a good alternative to holding a lot of inventory of parts they may or may not end up sending for these companies. On one hand, this move is exciting for UPS, but they also are worried that the more affordable 3D printing becomes, the less companies will need UPS to provide this service- if they can simply buy the printers themselves to produce parts on an as-needed basis, then what UPS has done with this will no longer be as useful.

Dot Silverman, on the other hand, came to talk to us about Biohacking. Biohacking is a relatively new area of the Digital Making world, and covers a wide array of activities. She told us about her experience with Instructables, which is a website that offers classes for people to learn about any number of things. There are classes on 3D printing (both for adults and for children) as well as on sewing, leather making, solar power creation, and more. She also told us about her experience with Harvard Wyss Institute, which involved a lot more technically intricate experimental processes, such as with soft robotics (which is exactly what it sounds like).

I really enjoyed listening to Ms. Silverman talk, as she was so passionate about the work she had done in the past and excited about the experiments and work she was planning on doing in the future. She passed around items for us to examine, as real-life examples of the things she and her coworkers are working on. My favorite was the paper microscope- these allow for low income areas in places like Africa to have access to devices to explore the world at a cellular level. Ms. Silverman told us that each one could be produced for around five cents, which is amazing in comparison to microscopes which are, at their cheapest, around fifty dollars.

I am really excited to get to the fab lab, not only to experience the new machines, but to get to speak to Ms. Silverman again, as she was such an upbeat and fun person.