The DIY Revolution: Consumers Alter Or Build Items Previously Not Possible. Is It A Good Thing?

Recent advances in technology allow consumers to alter, customize, or build locally items previously not possible. These items are often referred to as Do-It-Yourself (DIY) products. You've probably heard DIY used in home repair and renovation projects on television. DIY now happens in some unexpected areas. Today's blog post highlights two areas.

DIY Glucose Monitors

Earlier this year, CNet described the bag an eight-year-old patient carries with her everywhere daily:

"... It houses a Dexcom glucose monitor and a pack of glucose tablets, which work in conjunction with the sensor attached to her arm and the insulin pump plugged into her stomach. The final item in her bag was an iPhone 5S. It's unusual for such a young child to have a smartphone. But Ruby's iPhone, which connects via Bluetooth to her Dexcom monitor, allowing [her mother] to read it remotely, illustrates the way technology has transformed the management of diabetes from an entirely manual process -- pricking fingers to measure blood sugar, writing down numbers in a notebook, calculating insulin doses and injecting it -- to a semi-automatic one..."

Some people have access to these new technologies, but many don't. Others want more connectivity and better capabilities. So, some creative "hacking" has resulted:

"There are people who are unwilling to wait, and who embrace unorthodox methods. (You can find them on Twitter via the hashtag #WeAreNotWaiting.) The Nightscout Foundation, an online diabetes community, figured out a workaround for the Pebble Watch. Groups such as Nightscout, Tidepool and OpenAPS are developing open-source fixes for diabetes that give major medical tech companies a run for their money... One major gripe of many tech-enabled diabetes patients is that the two devices they wear at all times -- the monitor and the pump -- don't talk to each other... diabetes will never be a hands-off disease to manage, but an artificial pancreas is basically as close as it gets. The FDA approved the first artificial pancreas -- the Medtronic 670G -- in October 2017. But thanks to a little DIY spirit, people have had them for years."

CNet shared the experience of another tech-enabled patient:

"Take Dana Lewis, founder of the open-source artificial pancreas system, or OpenAPS. Lewis started hacking her glucose monitor to increase the volume of the alarm so that it would wake her in the night. From there, Lewis tinkered with her equipment until she created a closed-loop system, which she's refined over time in terms of both hardware and algorithms that enable faster distribution of insulin. It has massively reduced the "cognitive burden" on her everyday life... JDRF, one of the biggest global diabetes research charities, said in October that it was backing the open-source community by launching an initiative to encourage rival manufacturers like Dexcom and Medtronic to open their protocols and make their devices interoperable."

Convenience and affordability are huge drivers. As you might have guessed, there are risks:

"Hacking a glucose monitor is not without risk -- inaccurate readings, failed alarms or the wrong dose of insulin distributed by the pump could have fatal consequences... Lewis and the OpenAPS community encourage people to embrace the build-your-own-pancreas method rather than waiting for the tech to become available and affordable."

Are DIY glucose monitors a good thing? Some patients think so as a way to achieve convenient and affordable healthcare solutions. That might lead you to conclude anything DIY is an improvement. Right? Keep reading.

DIY Guns

Got a 3-D printer? If so, then you can print your own DIY gun. How did this happen? How did the USA get to here? Wired explained:

"Five years ago, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun... he drove back to Austin and uploaded the blueprints for the pistol to his website, Defcad.com... In the days after that first test-firing, his gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Wilson made the decision to go all in on the project, dropping out of law school at the University of Texas, as if to confirm his belief that technology supersedes law..."

The law intervened. Wilson stopped, took down his site, and then pursued a legal remedy:

"Two months ago, the Department of Justice quietly offered Wilson a settlement to end a lawsuit he and a group of co-plaintiffs have pursued since 2015 against the United States government. Wilson and his team of lawyers focused their legal argument on a free speech claim: They pointed out that by forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable data, the State Department was not only violating his right to bear arms but his right to freely share information. By blurring the line between a gun and a digital file, Wilson had also successfully blurred the lines between the Second Amendment and the First."

So, now you... anybody with an internet connection and a 3-D printer (and a computer-controlled milling machine for some advanced parts)... can produce their own DIY gun. No registration required. No licenses nor permits. No training required. And, that's anyone anywhere in the world.

Oh, there's more:

"The Department of Justice's surprising settlement, confirmed in court documents earlier this month, essentially surrenders to that argument. It promises to change the export control rules surrounding any firearm below .50 caliber—with a few exceptions like fully automatic weapons and rare gun designs that use caseless ammunition—and move their regulation to the Commerce Department, which won't try to police technical data about the guns posted on the public internet. In the meantime, it gives Wilson a unique license to publish data about those weapons anywhere he chooses."

As you might have guessed, Wilson is re-launching his website, but this time with blueprints for more DIY weaponry besides pistols: AR-15 rifles and semi-automatic weaponry. So, it will be easier for people to skirt federal and state gun laws. Is that a good thing?

You probably have some thoughts and concerns. I do. There are plenty of issues and questions. Are DIY products a good thing? Who is liable? How should laws be upgraded? How can society facilitate one set of DIY products and not the other? What related issues do you see? Any other notable DIY products?

Comments

[E.S. Gordon]

Wow, VERY interesting! I find Wilson's legal argument specious, and am pissed that the DoJ folded like that. Having the ability to 3D print an automobile doesn't give one the right to drive it without a license. And I suspect it is not legal to post bomb making instructions to the internet, but I could be wrong. Those are more appropriate arguments, IMO.
Nice article!

[George]

Readers:

Some good background and history about relevant laws and The Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 in this article:

The Age Of The Downloadable Gun Begins
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/opinion/3d-printed-guns-trump-terrorists.html

George
Editor
http://ivebeenmugged.typepad.com

[George]

Retweet Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff Jul26 This dangerous move by Trump Admin to cater to the NRA poses a grave threat to public safety by making it possible for ANYONE with a 3D printer, including terrorists and domestic abusers, to print untraceable firearms without as much as a background check. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2018/07/23/3-d-printing-guns-downloadable-gun-legal-august-1/820032002/

Retweet Everytown @Everytown Jul 25 We can’t allow the release of downloadable files to make untraceable guns on 3D printers. https://act.everytown.org/sign/stop-downloadable-guns-v/

George
Editor
http://ivebeenmugged.typepad.com

[George]

Update:

U.S. Judge Extends Ban Of Online 3-D Printed Gun Blueprints
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-guns/u-s-judge-extends-ban-of-online-3-d-printed-gun-blueprints-idUSKCN1LC1UF
August 27, 2018

The ban will remain in place until the court case is solved. A little good news, but a willful distributor could easily use an off-shore site outside the USA to distribute online the gun blueprints.

George
Editor
http://ivebeenmugged.typepad.com