This guy has done something potentially revolutionary, in all senses of the word: he's hacked a normal microwave oven to melt bronze, iron and silver. Futher study may yield a method of melting steel.
What this means:
(a) short term, look for personalized items cast from the above metals to become very chic.
(b) medium term, read about accidents while experimenting with this new technique in the news, leading to a hue and cry (and maybe laws) against the practise, and heretofore inconcievable clauses in rental agreements (I don't think mine specifically outlaws heavy industrial metalwork...) and enforcement of zoning regulations.
(c) hopefully long term, as the skill develops, I'd like to see the skill of metal-working re-appear as (a) a craft that can be practised in your own home/shed, and (b) drive a new bottom-up revolution in personalization of items that were once produced en masse.
Of course, if we ever get to melt steel in a microwave, this means that things like (e.g.) eating utensils, ornaments, etc. could conceivably be made in a normal kitchen.
This is gives tremendous for grass-roots creativity to take hold - if it happens, the technique will be used for things that this guy will never have imagined.
But me being a typical man, I have to point out that primitive bladed weapons could also be manufactured at home using this method, which comes periliously close to putting weapons back in the hands of the worlds middle-class, which at the moment is the probably the most docile demographic on the planet. That would be interesting, and another reason for Western governments of the world to restrict the practise, should it get that far.
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