Where Is the Missing Matter?

Abstract

The additive manufacturing (or the popular 3D printing) is relatively new technology which opens new spaces for entrepreneurial imagination and promises next stage of the industrial revolution. It is creating three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The printer transforms the file into a material object layer by layer, using different raw materials. Today, the additive manufacturing is successfully used in architecture, medicine and healthcare, light and heavy industries, education, etc. The paper analyses the roles of actors in manufacturing the objects. It starts with the Heideggerian questioning of technology (), searching for the causes of bringing into appearance of the 3D model. According to Heideggerian analysis the technology is represented as an ‘unveiling of the truth'. The paper suggests that the old understanding of matter as a thing-in-itself should be replaced by a new, flexible, fluid, concept of matter, which is more or less manipulable. The matter is no more an occasion for object's taking place. On the other hand, it seems 3D printing technology is reduced to mere means; a simple intermediary, a copier of ideas. From that perspective the paper questioning the problem of action in ANT and search how action and interaction is distributed and how actors constitutes themselves as well as their actor-world.