Yes, that was the big hope back then, that we would no longer need printer drivers. You could just just plug in any printer, or give an IP-address of a printer and it would immediately work.
Instead it got much worse. Now when you buy a new printer you have to check which operating systems is supported. My CUPS server has 2064 drivers just for HP printers.
Even though my printers actually do have postscript interpreters I can still not just plug them in to an USB port on any computer and print a document. It is crazy.