Tiny dots of liquid feedstock squirt through a nozzle, hardening after they leave the printer, and layers of hardened material build on top of one other to make the object. You probably know that a desktop 3D printer is more or less a fancy robotic hot-glue gun. Yes, the tantalizing prospect of local, on-demand 3D production, without waste or a distribution footprint dangles before us. There’s good news, though: I hear we’re on the cusp of a radical manufacturing revolution. In fact, we can’t stop making stuff, which would be perfectly fine if our medium of choice wasn’t a Pacific-Garbage-Dump’s-worth of petrol plastic.

But humans make a lot of other stuff too, not just homes. We divide the labor among ourselves, and we will defend our nests alongside family and friends if threatened. Honeybees have hives, ants excavate ant-hills, termites make mounds. Societies aren’t too common among mammals in general though most are created by insects, but insect societies are a lot like ours. Related: What Can the Honeybee Teach Us About Insulation, Elasticity, and Flight? When everyone does their thing in a society, surprising things happen, be it in human cities or underground naked mole rat labyrinths. When I say “societies,” I mean species that group into tightly coordinated bunches, where individuals do different kinds of jobs, together, at the same time. I’m not talking about the great faceless herds of wildebeest, or swirling, soulless schools of sardine, though I love those too. One of my passions is trying to figure out how societies evolve.

Human brain 3d model papier mache