You know how important your printer has become in your daily life. You count on it all day at work, and then at home for driving directions, recipes, and much more. But what about the larger picture. Where do printers stand in the history of human progress?

When the The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMMS) published its list of the Top 100 Materials Moments for All Time, Guttenberg's invention of the moveable- type printing press in 1450 came in 19th place (far behind Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Elements at #1 but way ahead of Baekeland's invention of hard plastics at #43). TMMS credits the press with establishing "the fundamental enabling technology for mass communication."

Since 1450, the innovations in printing have been steady and dramatic. Presses became smaller, more dynamic, and evolved to the point at which you have more printing power sitting on your desk than Guttenberg could have ever imagined.

In the 1980s when personal laser jet and inkjet printers became mainstream, it seemed that printer technology might enjoy a Moore's Law of its own with per page prices, speed, and quality improving at an exponential rate. As you probably know, that didn't exactly happen. Until, perhaps, now!

In its article "Big News from Little Squirts," The Economist writes: "While inkjet technology has dawdled for a decade, it is poised now for a sudden leap in performance." The article points out the radical innovations that have or will soon hit the market, including Kodak's Easyshare line, which promises 100 year photo life while cutting ink prices in half, and HP's new Edgeline Inkjets which boasts 70 laser-quality pages per minute (albeit with prices starting at $18,930). The biggest shock to the current printing paradigm may come from Silverbrook's Memjet technology, which threatens to leapfrog over the rest of the industry. It offers 60 pages per minute at a price between $200-$300.

While the myth of the paperless office never came to pass, we may be looking at a new print-on-demand revolution fueled by content sharing tools like Scribd.

As Guttenberg introduced his printing press, did he envision the sprawling media and informed public he would help create? Today, we can easily project ourselves into the near future to easily imagine a fabbed world where you can print anything. It doesn't take an Isaac Asimov to visualize a day when you can print any book or publication on your desktop faster than it would take you to drive to the store and buy a copy.

So, keep your printer busy and happy and remember: While the future will probably not be paperless, you probably won't have to wait very long to print anything out, even a new iPod.