X-Message-Number: 13107
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: Will the public have direct access to SDIP nanotech?
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 10:53:22 -0800

John Grig wrote in part:

> To have this be a reality is a dream of mine.  But I wonder if the
> government would allow the public direct access to nano assemblers?  In
the
> cause of preventing terrorism as well as accidents I could see the
> governments of the world only allowing direct access to nano to government
> and corporate entities.  The ulterior motive would be to maintain their
> strong control over society.

Suppose you are right and some countries like the U.S. ban nano development
technology.  As I see it, other countries would busily go ahead as well to
compete, and just like all weapons technology to date, nanotech would leak
out into the hands of others anyway.  Once the genie is out of the bottle,
he's out, as I see it.

And, again, it seems to me that as each lower level of the pyramid of human
need/desire is excised from expense (becomes "free" because it is cheap as
dirt and equally available through self-duplication), the need for profits
(money) will also become increasingly restricted.  Food will probably be the
first to drop out of the money economy.  When food is free, the transport of
food (trucks, rail and air transport) will be a dead market, as will
distribution centers for food (grocery stores).  When clothing is removed,
even more of manufacture, transport and distribution would vanish from a
money-driven economy.

If my vision is correct, the last area of money/trade economy to go will
probably be leisure items (toys, status-only symbols) and by that time the
size of the money economy will have shrunk such that it will be only a tiny
economy based on token money - not too different from what Monopoly game
money is worth outside of playing the Monopoly game itself.

Thus the entire face of the current money-driven economy will vanish, as I
see it.  There simply will be no need for either for-profit corporations
jealously guarding their efforts as money will have ceased to exist.

What I can't see is how money and restricted control can be made to endure.
But then I did not understand how a service-based economy could develop when
Alvin Toffler first proposed it in 1980 (THE THIRD WAVE) either.

In any case, I personally believe three things will happen:

(1) Self-Duplicating and Individually-Programmed (SDIP) molecular
nanotechnology is inevitable.
(2) SDIP nanotech will be impossible to control and restrict.
(3) SDIP nanotech will produce such immense personal wealth (ownership
control of one's environment) that money will cease have a purpose and cease
to exist.

Just my thoughts on why the future will be well worth seeing.

George Smith
www.cryonics.org

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