One particular technology that has received a lot of attention this past year is 3D printers. I first heard about them when one of my shakuhachi teachers, Geni Skendo, mentioned work that was being done with fabricating a flute using a 3D printer. That work is described in the following video: 

About a week ago I came across this article first mentioning about how this 3D printing technology is allowing hobbyists to print robots. The following video shows a nice example of what people are doing with this:

Just this idea of hobbyists being able to create robots easily is amazing. When I think of how world-changing it has been for the internet and small computer technology to allow hobbyists to manipulate documents, I can easily imagine the kind of creativity that we will see when 3D printing technology is refined. Even as it exists today, 3D printing technology is being used for some interesting applications. As an example,  this BBC article describes how a simple version of the technology is ready to be used to print 3D chocolate treats.