Somebody who saw my earlier post sent me a page out of manual I wrote in 1978. 5 x 7 dot matrix blurs stained onto the paper through a typewriter ribbon. Really, really, ugly. Anybody remember ASCII Art? I would never have imagined anything like a 12 color, better-than-photo-quality printer appearing in my lifetime. Not even science fiction was predicting that.
So OK, now the orange, warty octopus model looks pregnant with possibility if not art, a crude dot-matrix promise of wonderful things to come. High quality photo imagery realized as physical 3D objects has got to be pretty cool and it doubtless will come in some form we can't yet imagine. Definitely one of the Next Big Things, sooner or later. Progress...don't leave home without it.
If I were a kid again, I'd be keeping my eye out on this stuff.
OH WAIT! Science fiction DID envision this! And wasn't Anne pretty in 1956?