Did anyone ask for a 3D mouth scanner? Does anyone need yet another over-engineered solution to a problem we never had in the first place?
Once, necessity was the mother of invention, which is when the big important things came about, like the wheel and the dishwasher – and so it was, until we had everything we needed. After this, convenience became invention’s adoptive parent.
And now? Well, sometimes an anecdote explains things best: I wear a custom-made bite plate to bed because I grind my teeth. Every year I gnaw through another of these shields and then my dentist makes me a new one. It’s a simple process: he presses alginate – a jelly-like substance extracted from seaweed – against my teeth to form a mould, lets it harden, then pops it off, creating a perfect impression. This goes to the lab where they make my new customised bite plate, which arrives a week later.
But a curious thing happened at the dentist on Thursday. This time, Dr Paul proudly wheeled over a shiny new computer on a stand, with a probe attached. This, he told me, was a 3D scanner that he would use to map the inside of my mouth. It took a few minutes of him rooting about, then he pushed some buttons and declared: “Done! It’ll be at the lab in 20 minutes.” And when would I get my new bite plate? In a week.
So, nothing had really changed except that now, instead of a minor investment in a bag of alginate, he had made a major investment in cutting-edge technology which required rare earth minerals, electricity, internet connection, a greedy data centre chewing up resources, updates, maintenance…
And yet the time, effort and result remained exactly the same as before: I get a new bite plate in a week. So, what was that about necessity, or even convenience, being the mother of invention?
Perhaps the axiom has changed; perhaps, in fact, invention has become the mother of necessity. Things come into being, and we see them as a novelty or a luxury, and then we grow reliant on them and forget how we did things before.
I mean, there was a time when we met up successfully with friends, followed the news, read maps, managed our banking, took photographs and made dinner without needing an electronic device. Now, we get cellphone separation anxiety.
But did anyone ask for a 3D mouth scanner? Does anyone need yet another over-engineered solution to a problem we never had in the first place?
