The Melbourne-based futurist Steve Sammartino thinks it takes but four words to sum up the history of human labour: spear, seed, spanner and silicon.

The author of The Great Fragmentation says work has always evolved around the technology of the day and that the innovations reshaping the world promise to level the playing field for those living away from major population centres for the first time since the era of the spear.

“In the hunter-gatherer era, our spear and primitive tools defined work and location – we followed the herd,” he says.

“We lived off farms and villages in the agricultural era and moved to the cities en masse during the industrial revolution. But now, in the age of silicon, for the first time we can separate location and labour. We can live where we want and it provides the greatest opportunity in human history for remote locations. Silicon is the great equaliser.”

Sammartino is brimming with excitement over the possibilities presented by the so-called fourth industrial revolution of new technologies sweeping the world and singles out 3D printing in particular as the “biggest opportunity for remote areas since continental drift”.

Just as the internet opened up the flow of information beyond centralised city zones, Sammartino argues that 3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, will see the same happen for physical products, allowing people to make a living from “desktop manufacturing”, with creators no longer obliged to live anywhere near centres of industrial production.

“It will also have a positive impact of the cost of goods and timeliness of delivery to remote communities,” he says.

“In 20 years many goods which are currently produced centrally, most often in densely populated areas, will be produced on location via 3D printers. Simple things at home and more complex items in 3D printing picked up in stores you send your files to. This means that the cost of delivery evaporates, as does the time constraints, because now we are simply selling and moving files across the internet to make physical things.”

Whether or not Sammartino is right will be known soon enough in Australia, where a nationwide internet project promises to roll out satellite connections to the remote areas that make up 86% of the continent’s sprawling land mass but are home to just 3% of the population.

Residents face a diverse set of challenges, from the farmers struggling to pay the bills as climate change bites to the residents of remote Indigenous communities threatened with closure. Some of the biggest economic disadvantages of remote living could be cancelled out by the arrival of the national broadband network, a contentious Australian government project that promises to bring the entire country online by 2020 – although this is just the latest revised target for an initiative that has been beset by a steady drip-feed of delays, cost blowouts and shrinking ambitions.

If and when the outback is blanketed with broadband-speed internet, the NBN will catapult areas that mostly missed out on the third industrial revolution of computing and online right into an era of smart devices, automation and 3D printers.

Additive manufacturing is becoming ever more affordable with machines capable of creating plastics-based items now costing in the order of hundreds of dollars and devices coming on to the market capable of producing products made out of hundreds of other materials.

The Perth-based company Aurora Labs has developed a high-end 3D printer that turns metallic powder “a bit like beach sand” into metal-based products, according to University of Western Australia’s head of mechanical and chemical engineering, Tim Sercombe, who has been consulting with the company on the technology.

“These printers are orders of magnitude cheaper than conventional 3D metal printers,” he says. “This brings the possibility of access to communities where the technology is currently too expensive to contemplate. They normally cost half a million [Australian dollars], well beyond just about any remote community, but this one is fifty grand, which is more likely to be raised.”

Sercombe says one function of particular interest for remote communities is being able to create parts on demand for things that break unexpectedly – whether that is a crop harvester, washing machine, or water pump.

“People in remote communities won’t necessarily have 3D printers in house but their town might have a local hardware or a farming supply depot, maybe a local mechanic or general corner store that is equipped with one,” he says. “It would be relatively local compared to shipping it in.”

He says at the current price point additive manufacturing of metals is more suited to essential replacement repairs rather than, say, leisure equipment.

“Sure, if you break your tennis racket and can’t get one for three weeks, it is not the end of world. A bore pump goes down in a remote community and you don’t have any water – that’s much more significant.”

He nevertheless thinks 3D printing the kind of every day consumer goods accessible to people in urban areas but harder to source in the outback will soon become affordable, pointing to a Perth company called Flying Machine that is already offering 3D-printed bicycles.

CSIRO manufacturing group leader Dr Leon Prentice says remote communities could also particularly benefit from being able to access short-term medical solutions in times of need.

“Additive manufacturing could, for example, print custom prostheses, like artificial limbs for amputees, custom splints/casts/braces, possible temporary implants – including dental – before more formal long-term treatment is available, and items for patient support,” he says.

Not everyone is so gung-ho on the 3D printing revolution taking hold out bush anytime soon.

Daniel Featherstone, the general manager of the Indigenous Remote Communities Association, says the skills do not yet exist in such areas to utilise such technology. “It’s still too early to really see how these may have an impact in remote communities – our focus is on getting basic connectivity and skills in communities,” he says.

“No doubt once there is good connectivity and skills the possibility of 3D printing will become apparent, especially due to the lack of access to suppliers for spare parts and items that can be printed on-site.”

The chairman of Broadband for the Bush, Ray Heffernan, says that the cities will need to lead the way. “3D printing is primarily a manufacturing process and, if it comes to remote communities, I think that is only going to happen when it becomes commonplace in wider [urbanised] society,” he says.

Back in the city, Sammartino is concerned that the internet infrastructure in the works will not be up to the job of realising the full potential of 3D printing and other emerging technologies.

“I fear the NBN is both piecemeal and not at the level our modern economy will require given everything we touch will be connected to it,” he says.

Sercombe disagrees that further NBN issues would ruin Aurora Labs’ 3D printing ambitions in remote areas, arguing that even if lower-than-projected internet speed is delivered, just about any connection will be enough given schematics are typically between one and 100 megabytes in size.

“Dial up speed, yes that would be an issue,” he says. “But even if the NBN only delivers current ADSL speed, it might take a few hours [to download a product design]. That’s not the end of the world, I wouldn’t think.”