@Jonathan_se5a_Sorens I agree, 90% of the time, but i have met a few people who really cannot learn… most of the time it is due to brain damage, or mental impairments, but mostly those are not the people we are talking about.
Forgot to mention I dropped out mid 9th grade. I have an 8th grade education and am self taught. I agree some are unable to learn due to diminished mental capacity but the point is: if you spark interest and make the tools available people can and will learn.
Yes I have skills. Skills are not talents. Talents are birthrights and skills can be learned. Anyone with average brain capacity can learn to play an instrument not everyone can win a Grammy. Anyone can learn to draw what they see not everyone can be an artistst. Skills take time and effort but can be learned and taught. But when you learn a skill your talent for it can shine.
Not entirely true, I am an engineer, i have 2 degrees and am good at what i do, however i cannot legibly hand write or spell. I have spent a large percentage of my life trying to learn how to do both of these things, but i simply cannot make it happen. There is a mental block that makes it incredibly difficult to learn. It i have learned how to work around these problems, but no matter how much effort i put into this it does not improve.
I guess so @Camerin_hahn , I’m in the same boat there. I live off spellcheck and autocomplete.
@Jonathan_se5a_Sorens as a person who is fluent in technology, it is easy to say that people who are not trying, it is the same way people look at my hand writing/spelling.
To a point, but so many don’t even try. and I’d also point out, that you and I both, despite our defficencies in writing and spelling, can make ourselfs understood in this medium. which imho is what really matters. spelling ontop of that is just candy on top.
@Camerin_hahn We’re not really talking about with soecific learning difficulties though, we’re talking about people who do not have the advantage of structured and well informed education system behind them.
I’m part engineer, part scientist in a way. I have a degree of Forensics and about 10 years in industry through analytical and clinical chemistry. I’ve taught technical service engineering courses all over the world through half a dozen different language barriers and what I know more than anything is that the desire to learn makes up for almost any deficiency in education.
I taught myself to CAD in Solidworks (let’s not discuss licenses eh…) and used it to design small microfluidic devices - test
pieces to demonstrate that 3D printing can be used to downscale traditional macro fluidic systems, making them more mobile. It took time and energy to do that, but I put that time in and the web provided the help and the answers… for nothing!
My point is that among the uneducated and unwilling mass there are those who are willing to take a chance and teach themselves (you did when you built a 3D printer and you did it despite many of the difficulties life put in the way) - with help these willful few can be turned into Movers; those people who move those around them.
With a different manufacturing paradigm within which to operate, these Movers can elevate those around them: the operator who learns to run a 3D printer and do basic CAD, can be the entrepreneur who prints out much needed items using local waste plastic as a resource and resolving local issues at the grass roots level.
You don’t need everyone in these areas to become educated, you just need the willful few, and you just need to motivate them well.
Re: natural ability: we can’t possibly believe that everyone in these areas is incapable of operating a 3D printer or CAD software, I believe there are plenty that aren’t capable but we forget how savvy young people are, and what they can do when they decide to, despite the obstacles.
Here are a few examples:
Kids teaching themselves in India: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html
A Frugal economy already in place in India - incredible what they can do with something i think of a basically a black box: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/05/features/frugal-innovation
A kid in the US teaching himself biochestry and resolving an incredible difficult problem without much support: http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_andraka_a_promising_test_for_pancreatic_cancer_from_a_teenager.html
@nathan_burley Nicely put, i do think that some machines are more suited for rural areas, for instance the printerbots, and reprap machines can typically be repaired with little or no custom parts. that makes them ideal for areas with limited access to power tools or stores, one big issue in places like india/africa is power stability. a 3d printer doesnt handle brown outs well. and prints take several hours. in some of these countries your are talking about very intermitent power. it isnt an unsolvable problem, but in those places the problems are bigger then just money.
Realize that the places that need help (rural villages) most of the town ends up with no electricity at all, in some places one of the reasons for under education is that intelect, it is the fact that if you fall asleep while studying after dark you could end up leaving a lantern on and killing your family while they sleep.
not to mention the cost of keeping candles/lanterns lit. there are may problems that need to be solved in remote areas.
as for he less problematic areas, there is still the issue of power stability, to have a computer reliably run you will need a UPS, and if you want to print on top of that you will need to have a UPS that can support the printer as well.
@Camerin_hahn That’s interesting about the printer types better suited to low maintenance. I think there has to be a bit of a revolution in 3D printing there - it has to be made a bit more bullet proof methinks.
LOL you’re not kidding about power stability. We used to sell instruments to labs in India and the middle east and in some places their idea of an Earth/Ground was a 3 ft metal pole driven into the ground outside and cabled to the machine 
So yeh, agreed - infrastructure has to either catch up or be surmounted.
UPS’ aren’t cheap so it would seem that a genny and a UPS would have to be part of the equation too. I wonder how the guy in the Instructables post above did it? I might just ask…
@Camerin_hahn It may be true that you have not excelled in spelling or writing but you have grasped enough of the basics to post here and get through school. That is my point exactly. You may not be Rudyard Kipling or Stephen King but you have usable skills enough to write things down and get your point across. Just because you don’t write in a professionalized calligraphy doesn’t mean you have not gained some skills in writing
@D_Rob In school my “right” to hand write was taken away because it was so poor. The asked my to type everything. since the 5th grade. I can draw, and sketch, but i have never been able to form letters in a legible manor. I am still trying to hand write, it is getting OK, but still typing is my go to for written communication.
@Camerin_hahn I can’t believe they did that! That’s awful! I’m glad that you can at least sketch and that you’re trying to do it by yourself but if it’s any consolation at all I almost never hand write anything these days… I doodle and sketch a little but I mainly go to CAD and PowerPoint to express ideas as I’m just more comfortable with computers as most people my age are. The way of things to come methinks…
@nathan_burley To be fair before that, i was asked to preform extra handwriting exercises. typically 2 hours or so a day from 1st grade through that point. at that point they decided that the focus on handwriting was inhibiting my learning in other areas. It was filed as a learning disability and i moved on and leaned how to type efficiently.
An idiot can still give you valuable feedback or ideas from time to time. Listening to idiots can be useful. There is less chance of them being useful than a smart person or a person that actually understands what you are talking about, but they can still give good ideas once in a while.
As for unskilled folk in 3rd world countries using 3d printers, perhaps they don’t even need CAD software. A Raspberry Pi would probably be pretty expensive from their point of view. Perhaps a printer that reads off of a series of sheets of paper might be good enough for them. Most folk can draw. Paper could probably be made or simple leaves could be drawn on with berry juice or ash.
A 3d printing pen may be even more useful, especially if it has no motor, but instead a mechanical temperature switch and a trigger to push the filament instead of a motor. Such a 3d printing pen could probably be powered with a small amount of wood or seed burned in a chamber of the pen itself. The cost may be an inch or two of small diameter metal or ceramic pipe, some carved wood and the temperature control mechanism. With ceramic/clay and manual temperature control, they may be able to make it from natural ingreds from the nearby stream and woods.
Personally, I think that 3D object designs on a mechanically read drum could also make 3d printing easier in 3d world countries. It would be essentially the player piano or ages old asian mechanical doll breed of 3d printer.