The Wall Street Journal and Mainstreaming 3D Printing

And when the Wall Street Journal catches on to 3D Printing…well, then you know it’s officially arrived.

We’re being tongue in cheek, of course, and a quick search for “3D Printing” at WSJ.com reveals the Journal has dabbled on the topic before, but they felt fit to run it on their Facebook page today and titled the photo piece “Printing the Future.”

Suffice to say they’ve approached it a bit differently than in the typical Journal-esque, ‘Notes from the Street’ manner.

But let’s face it, the Journal has a very different, perhaps fairly considered more “mainstream” readership than a TechCrunch or Mashable or other pure techie site, many of whom we’ve cited here for our 3D printing posts. That more mainstream audience is who the 3D printer makers need to reach if their businesses have any hope of truly thriving.

It’s one thing for the kids in Silicon Alley to have a Replicator on their desk in their 5th-floor walkup, avant garde office, it’s quite another to have the mid-level floor manager at Morgan Stanley picking one up for his living room.

We’re utterly fascinated by this impending scenario. Aren’t you? Think about it for a second. Can you see yourself at home, feet up on the coffee table watching Leno…err, Fallon tell some jokes on ‘Late Night’, accidentally knocking the remote off the sofa onto the hardwood floor, it shattering into pieces, you searching Thingiverse, plugging the design in to your Makerbot, reprinting the remote and turing up the volume with enough time left to finish Jimmy’s monologue?

Can that really be the future?

Ink Technologies

Robyn Warner
Robyn Warner has been writing since she learned how to hold a pen. She wrote her first book of poems before the age of 10. Though creative writing is her preference, she is enjoying life in the technical blog world. Robyn’s goal in her 30s is to use her writing to inspire fellow cancer survivors and have a job that gives her the flexibility to live anywhere and never wear shoes.

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