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Funny, I see it the other way around; the tech is so flexible and untied that it's hard to classify any use as outside of what was intended.

Smartphones, 3D printers, VR goggles, Quadcopters, IPFS - all of them are designed without a single use in mind, but as platforms for the users. A certain use case (e.g. 3D printed heads as urns) may be unexpected, but it's not an hack, it's just the tech being used as intended.




Perhaps the magnetic tape recorder and cell phone weren't the best examples of "unintended uses", but using chest x-rays as phonograph records is a clever hack.

Smartphones are intended a a personal device running apps controlled by a human user (sure, a "platform"). They're not intended to be a sensor pack / CPU for self-driving cars.

3D printers are intended for printing plastic stuff (sure, arbitrary plastic stuff). But maybe they can be co-opted for squirting molten plastic at your enemies.

Quadcopters are intended for doing arbitrary stuff while hovering. But you could re-purpose one as an oscillating fan.


I've experimented with my 3d printer by attaching a wire connected to a capacitor bank to the tool head. I can cut (with low accuracy) metal foil that's connected to the other end of the capacitor bank this way, I never did more experiments with it.




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