3-D printing is clearly going to be to 2018 as mobile devices were to 2008, the web was to 1998, personal computers were to 1988, and dance floors with randomly lit colored squares were to 1978: entirely ubiquitous, incredibly accessible, and so groundbreaking that you're going to want to pull your face off and throw it at someone every time you hear about it.

And it will also, of course, be incredibly profitable. We'll see the next generation of billionaires, the equivalent of Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates or Howard J. Discotheque.

In a way, I feel like I've been sent back in time to put right what once went wrong or, failing that, to make a quick buck off what once went wrong. Having lived through my share of civilization-altering technological revolutions, I feel like I should be able to figure out what's going to happen this time, and step in to take full advantage of it.

And I do know what's going to happen. Just not in a way that leads to profit. It's less like knowing who's going to win the World Series, and more like knowing which Pepsi will win me a free Pepsi.

Let me give you some examples.

1. 3-D printers will be clumsily incorporated into TV shows

You will see no end of police procedurals in which the bad guys have 3-D printers and are using them for purposes as nefarious as they are nonsensical. Cops will say things like "He's using a 3-D printer to process his drug supply – that means anything in this room could be made out of pure cocaine" or "He 3-D printed the gun with the fingerprints already on it." Also, child geniuses will be able to instantly create perfect likenesses of anything using a 3-D printer by pressing, like, six buttons.

2. People will patent things that already exist, except with "3-D printed" added on

Hey, want to use a 3-D printer to make custom wedding cake toppers? Sorry, at this very moment someone is at the patent office registering "A Method for Creation of Nuptial-Based Adornments Using Three-Dimensional Printing Equipment." Similar patents will cover making jewelry, replacing missing board game pieces, or anything you or anyone else can imagine. Because we don't reward making cool things, we reward thinking about making cool things.

(Technically, I might be able to make money from this one, but at the cost of my very soul. So call it a "maybe.")

3. 3-D printing will be characterized as a constant threat to children

At some point some kid will inhale some piece of plastic, with dire consequences. This is undeniably a tragedy, and unfortunately not an uncommon one. However, this particular piece of plastic will have come from a 3-D printer, and the television news media will jump on it like a hyena on a dead hyena. "3-D printers: child-murdering cyborgs? Details at eleven." Meanwhile family watchdogs will point out that commercially available 3-D printers have no safeguard to prevent teenage boys from printing out plastic boobs.

4. People will make a huge deal out of not having 3-D printers

Once 3-D printers reach critical mass, so that there's maybe a fifty-fifty chance that any given household has one, certain people will make an extremely vocal virtue out of not owning one. The first wave will consist of people saying "I just don't see what the point is. I've lived without a 3-D printer all my life, I certainly don't need one now." The second wave will be "I'm so tired of hearing about 3-D printers, it seems like people won't shut up about them, I'm refusing to buy one on principle." The third and final wave will be "I've never had a 3-D printer. I feel like we've lost the joy of sculpting things by hand and making do with what we have rather than printing out new things all the time." They'll all be right, of course, but that won't make them less annoying.

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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a disco stud, a dancing queen, and a macho man.