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Some of the printers being developed already print layers as thin as 20 microns. And that's the unclassified commercial stuff. The applications are mind-boggling... replacement human skin, organs, eyeballs, limbs, may all be printed one day, with printer cartridges full of stem cells.

Food... we'll be able to print out a 5-star meal for dinner. You won't buy recipe books in the future. You'll buy recipe files, computer files.

Online purchases... sneakers, clothing, etc. Amazon won't ship via UPS any longer. Instead, you'll download a file from Amazon to your printer (3D printer prices are falling fast) and print out your purchase.

Highways clogged with 18-wheelers delivering goods? A thing of the past. It won't only be Amazon using 3D printing to circumvent shipping costs. Hardly anything will need to be loaded on a truck and shipped somewhere in the future. Shipping will be digital.

It does seem that this time, a brave new world really does await us. And it's right around the corner, to boot.

But the negatives, too, seem limitless: Porn, terrorism, piracy... It's going to be the next frontier in piracy.

Check out the Wikipedia article about it.