[arm55]

This is one of those situations in which incremental improvements in technology add up enough that they enable some pretty amazing applications. Very cool.

Aside from the 3d printing, this is possible largely because of huge advancements in immune-inert implantable materials and anti-biofouling coatings. I think we're ready to see this sort of thing become the norm very very quickly.

[eru]

Material science is behind lots of advances in the `cooler' technologies. (And better numerics are behind lots of advances in the `cooler' parts of computing.)

[rch]

Lately it seems like I've run into a lot people interested in the so-called materials genome:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/mgi