Last week, my wife Alice and I stopped into MakerBot Industries, the DIY 3D printing company in Brooklyn, and got our heads scanned. The MakerBotters covered us in cornstarch (so that the laser-scanner could resolve our hair and eyebrows) and waved this crazy, six-degrees-of-freedom laser-scanning wand around us until we had been turned into polygons. Now our heads are online in Thingiverse, along with many others who happened to pass through MakerBot’s doors while they had the scanner on the premises (it was a loaner). It’s no Stephen Colbert head, but it’s mine, and I’m (cautiously) excited about what the world ends up doing with it!
