3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a digital 3D model. Today, technology already exists that allows us to 3D print almost everything, from houses to bridges and turbines, and from pizzas to shirts, jeans, shoes or even human organs. And this has the potential to change the world.

Old industrial production modes are dependent on production chains that can be broken down. Production using 3D printers does not suffer such a risk, because ultimately all that needs to be passed on to the printer is a software, not a physical good.

This way, the production of any good can eventually be relocated at almost no cost. Because, unlike traditional industrial production, production using 3D printing is networked: a new node can be added to the network at any time.

The widespread use of 3D printers will thus fundamentally change the dynamics of development. In classical development theories we are rightly told that geography matters. If a country is surrounded by underdeveloped neighbours and the distance to developed countries is long, it will be very difficult – bordering on impossible – for that country to create a developed economy, for the simple reason that the routes between it and the developed economies are long, difficult and expensive, so they cannot be used for a meaningful and constant exchange of goods and services between the two sides.

This is one of the main reasons (but undoubtedly not the only one) why sub-Saharan African (or Central Asian) countries are underdeveloped, or at best moderately developed. Even if those markets were open, even if local political leaders were all in favour of economic freedom and free trade (which is often far from the case), the very great distance between those countries and the centres of the developed world, and the poor (and sometimes even unreliable) transport infrastructure, make sustained trade interactions between that specific country and the developed world largely prohibitive.

For any leader seeking economic development for his or her country, geography can be a curse – an extremely difficult handicap to overcome.

Both digitisation and the production of goods via 3D printers make geography largely irrelevant. Physical distances and the difficulty of crossing them no longer mean anything. When you produce something on a 3D printer, you are ultimately producing a piece of software – which instructs every other 3D printer in the world to produce exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, and which can be transmitted quasi-instantly anywhere in the world via the internet.

An Uzbek in Samarkand will be able to order a pizza from a pizzeria in Rome and instantly get the software to produce it on her 3D printer, and a New Yorker will be able to order a traditional Ghanaian shirt – and instantly get the software to produce it, too.

The production of goods via 3D printers, being indifferent to physical distances, means that goods can be exchanged from anywhere, giving every economy opportunities for growth that many now lack. All the more so as production costs fall significantly, as there is no longer a need to produce and store a huge number of goods. You only need to produce a single copy of a particular good – and the software to produce it. That good can then be reproduced by anyone who wants it, wherever they are. The very idea of mass production will radically change its meaning.

For all of the above to become possible, it is obviously necessary for the internet to become accessible to everyone. This means, on the one hand, that in the new world the right to access the internet will become a fundamental human right, alongside the right to life, the right to vote or the right to housing, for example.

It does not necessarily follow that the internet should become a public good, like justice or education for example, a good to be provided (possibly free of charge) by public authorities. The Internet will be delivered as before, in a competitive market – and not just via fixed or mobile networks, but also via satellites. But it follows without doubt that if a person is denied (or limited) access to the internet, a fundamental right will be violated (or limited).