As we speak, 3D printing is set to move towards a more industrial scale. Already a Dutch company names Shapeways has set up a large-scale facility in Queens in New York City, ready to being production in the New Year. Without a doubt, more will pop up globally. The impact of additive manufacturing (or as is better known as 3D printing) is set to be utterly transformational. But if speculation on how this will bear on the creative process of designers, more fascinating is seeing how this might amalgamate with dystopian expectations that are coming to the fore in our entertainment sectors, providing cultural effect on levels we have yet to imagine.

The explosion of investment and interest in such technology will change the way we manufacture and create. It will open doors to a more democratically accessible way to manifest ideas into product, no longer restricting the process to those with larger budgets or minimum production quotas. It also means that the manufacturing landscape will embody a major overhaul where reliance on overseas production may no longer be a necessary.

Not since the advent of the internet has something been so potentially transformative. Moreso, this is on a more mechanical level and there is connection to make. Combine this with cultural, political and social upheavals sprouting globally, recent issues regarding media’s exposure of manufacturing (particularly the garment industry with big names such as Forever 21, Abercrombie & Fitch and Walmart) over the utilization of child and slave labour, and a recent US election highlighting a sharp and nearly evenly split  divide within the country with a realization that racism is still far from eradicated within our cultures. Add the recent focus over the past year of UK and the presence of Victorian elements incorporated into design amidst support of modesty in fashion versus baring it all and you have enough elements to mimic a 2.0 version of the 1860s.

With so many social and political similarities, it’s hard to ignore that we are indeed reliving many elements of the Industrial Revolution and hardly a surprise that some of the recent films have featured, of all people, Abraham Lincoln as subject matter. His was a life during the height of all that was tumultuous in those uncertain times, central to change in a democracy with an identity crisis and something not too far off from what their elections revealed recently. That encertainty and internal conflict gve rise to dialogue of awareness on the subject of change and growth and where we stand, and there is no better character or persona that reflects our aspirations of reason within such identifiable conditions as America's sixteenth president.

But our culture has proven to encompass a hybrid of influence as we thrive in an environment brimming with information at our fingertips. Some of the expectations have found expression in other cultural avenues, most notably in our entertainment. Be it hinging on more biblical/spiritual darkness such as Cassandra Claire’s series “The Mortal Instruments” or more apocalyptic fare such as Moira Young’s Blood red Road (from her series “The Dust Lands”), Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” or Michael Grant’s “Gone”, these stories set in grim futures are expected to or are already in production for film release, adding to the soon-to-be-released sequel to the  Mad Max franchise is due in 2013.

The denim trade show “Bread and Butter” has already featured some design expectation along those lines, with distressed and deconstructed items meeting with some of the more avant garde creations coming out of fashion to meld well with the mend-and-make-do movement. All this adds a bleaker expression that matches the uncertainty existing in the world, especially as further prospects of change add to uncertainty and angst as to how we can all fit in.

As is, industries have been transformed since the advent of the internet and the evolution of touch technology. We saw the end of outmoded equipment (typewriter, tape recorder) and the slow yet impending demise or decline of certain industries (advertising, PR, printing) that has displaced some of the workforce in the same way that those in the textile and garment industry or blacksmiths eventually found themselves left behind.

But the question to ask is how can we meld something such as the intricate newness that 3D printing brings with the wear and tear that suggests decay? Could we see continued fashion elements from the age of the Industrial Revolution modernized with an aesthetic of assembly disintegration, taken further than what has been vaguely explored in the past few seasons? Will it find other elements not yet exploited, reconfigured with abandon yet carefully crafted courtesy of the new technology before us?

We won’t know until the Pre-Fall collections which will be on the runways soon, and it’s anyone’s guess whether designers will want to be as literal, especially in the face of restraint that has been largely self-imposed by those in the industry looking to thrive.