Meanwhile, emerging technologies – the drones, 3D printers and smart-home devices of the world – now seem a bit too old to be called the next big thing.

It is still easy to be dazzled by the display of drones ( ' , 無人機 ), 3D printers, virtual reality goggles ( ' , 眼鏡 ) and more smart devices than you could ever hope to catalog.

So I quickly designed a skirt on my computer, and I loaded the file on the printer.

I was lucky to be at the technology conference then, and I had access to 3D printers.

So now, the main challenge was to find the right material for printing clothes with, I mean the material you feed the printer with.

The biggest sixteenth-century printer, Plantin of Antwerp, had twenty-four printing presses and employed more than a hundred workers.