The Father of JD Printing

    About twenty years ago, the surgeons at the Wilford Hull medical center working to separate a pair of conjoined(连体的) twins thought that only one would be able to walk after the operation. After a model of the girls' bone structure was {#blank#}1{#/blank#} using 3D printing, however, they found a shared upper leg bone to be bigger than expected and split it successfully, {#blank#}2{#/blank#} in both twins being able to walk. Now eighty and still working as chief technology officer of 3D Systems. Chuck Hull is enjoying some minor {#blank#}3{#/blank#} 31 years after he first printed a small black eye-wash cup using a new method of manufacturing known as 3D printing.

    At the time, he was working for a company that used UV light to put thin layers of plastic coats on tabletops and {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. He had an idea that if he could place thousands of thin layers of plastic on top of each other and then cut their shape using light, he would be able to form three dimensional objects. After a year, he {#blank#}5{#/blank#} a system where light was shone into a bottle of photopolymer – a material which changes from liquid to plastic-like solid when light shines on it – and traces the shape of one level of the object. Subsequent layers are then printed until it is {#blank#}6{#/blank#}.

    After patenting the invention, he set up 3D Systems, {#blank#}7{#/blank#} getting $6m (£3.5m) from a Canadian investor. The first {#blank#}8{#/blank#} product came out in 1988 and proved a hit among car manufacturers, in the aerospace sector and for companies designing medical equipment. The possibilities appear endless – from home-printed food and medicine to {#blank#}9{#/blank#} that pictures of objects be able to be taken in shops and then recreated using plans downloaded from the Internet Although deliberate in his responses, there is one moment when the {#blank#}10{#/blank#} spoken Chuck Hull tells of his surprise about what exactly his creation was capable of achieving.

    They're still kids, and although there's a lot that the experts don't yet know about them, one thing they do agree on is that what the kids use and expect from their world has changed rapidly. And it's all because of technology.

    To the psychologists, sociologists, and media experts who study them, their digital devices set this new group {#blank#}1{#/blank#}, even from their Millennial (千禧年的) elders, who are quite familiar with technology. They want to be constantly connected and available in a way even their older brothers and sisters don't quite get. These differences may seem slight, but they{#blank#}2{#/blank#} the appearance of a new generation.

    The {#blank#}3{#/blank#} between Millennialelders and this younger group was so evident to psychologist Larry Rosen that he has {#blank#}4{#/blank#} the birth of a new generation in a new book, Rewired: Understanding the ingeneration and the Way They Learn, out next month. Rosen says the technically {#blank#}5{#/blank#} life experience of those born since the early 1990s is so different from the Millennial elders he wrote about in his 2007 book, Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation, that they distinguishthemselves as a new generation, which he hasgiven them the nickname of "ingeneration".

    Rosen says portability is the key. They are{#blank#}6{#/blank#}from their wireless devices which allow them to text as well as talk, so they can be constantly connected—even in class, where cell phones are {#blank#}7{#/blank#} banned.

    Many researchers are trying to determine whether technology somehow causes the brains of young people to be wired differently. "They should be distracted and should perform more poorly than they do," Rosen says. "But findings show teens {#blank#}8{#/blank#} distractions much better than we would predict by their age and their brain development."

    Because these kids are more devoted to technology at younger ages, Rosen says, the educational system has to change {#blank#}9{#/blank#} .

    "The growth on the use of technology with children is very rapid, and we run the risk of being out of step with this generation as far as how they learn and how they think. We have to give them options because they want their world {#blank#}10{#/blank#} ," Rosen says.