3D printing, when it was at the crest of its hype wave, was posited as a replacement for shopping. That you'd just buy a design and print your shoes and shirts

3D printing, when it was at the crest of its hype wave, was posited as a replacement for shopping. That you'd just buy a design and print your shoes and shirts at home. It was going to change consumer behavior completely - or so we were told. VR, again, was posited as the end of "reality" itself, that we'd be living so much in our virtual worlds that the boundaries between the real and the virtual will cease. While these might still happen, it's safe to say that their current applications are much narrower than the original scope