print me a jawbone and make it snappy

If you're the sort of person who thinks that three dimensional printed skulls, aside from being a boon to medicine, are simply fucking excellent, then, solipsistically speaking, you're also a reader of this blog. So:

A MAN has had 75 per cent of his skull replaced with a custom-made 3D-printed implant.

The un-named patient in the United States had his head imaged by a 3D scanner before the plastic prosthetic was crafted to suit his features.

Right now, body part printing is limited to prosaic stuff about saving lives, but just wait till the body mod crowd get their hands on it and begin to apply principles of improvement. Scales. Horns. Spines. Carapaces. Full exoskeletons. This could go mainstream in the same way that tattooing did twenty or so years ago (and why was that, by the way?). Soon the streets will be full of crawling, hopping things going to their jobs in call centres, where the signs on the wall forbid mandibles longer than six inches.

Comments

[Chris Williams]

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

“All right!” he thought, "This is worth every penny!"

[Barry Freed]

Scales. Horns. Spines. Carapaces. Full exoskeletons.

Mandibles. Don't forget mandibles.

[Alex]

He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place

Gripping his iPhone in one feeler, he thought: "Wait 'til my followers on twitter see this! And as for YouPorn..."

[ajay]

China Mieville's socialist perspective lets him down again. He thought that people would only be Remade compulsorily by the state - in fact, they're going to Remake themselves through the private sector!