The technology works by building up layer upon layer of material - typically plastic - to build complex solid objects.
"Maja's work with me was inspired by termites," he told me, which are able to build complex structures.
Now it has developed software to help customers build complex retail operations using little more than a Web design team.
So bureaucrats in Washington have done it for them, with contractors scrambling to build complex enrolment systems.
The bone that really sticks in their craw is evolution's ability to build complex organs and bodies without relying on a blueprint.
They demonstrate how pen and ink can be used to build complex forms that seem held together by some sort of adhesive energy.
A simple curve, he said, costs money to build; complex curves, going in several directions at once and following irregular geometries, cost a lot of money.
The companies that build complex physical things naturally plan their products in terms of lifecycles lasting at least 12 to 24 months, and sometimes much longer.
As he struggled to build "Complex Two," the mound with the stelae, and another large mound, called "Complex Three," what had already been accomplished was falling into disrepair.
By Elizabeth Kolbert Svante Pääbo's genome-sequencing project hopes to point up the differences that enabled humans, unlike the Neanderthals, with whom they interbred, to build complex societies.
Ants build complex colonies; city residents create distinct neighborhoods; simple pattern recognition software learns to recommend new books or music based on our previous choices.
