I've thought the 3D-printing analogy is pretty apt for about a year now. It had a lot of promise at first but it never quite has the impact people thought it would. There are still 3D printers for sale, and people still prototype with them, but nobody's printing out a dustpan when they need one.
I think you’re missing the thrust of my comment and the responses. Nobody is saying 3-D printers are worthless, but if you remember what it was like when they were first emerging into the mainstream, you would think we would all have one in our living rooms by now just spitting out everything we need constantly. We would all be building our own furniture and repairing every niche thing in our house with them. We’d all be on some magical network sharing files with each other. We’d have a massive surge in printed guns.
Everything was theorized and it all was a variation of “nothing will be the same for anyone ever again,” not “some specific areas will be really different.”
