X-Message-Number: 18363 From: "George Smith" <> Subject: How to collect your bet when you win! Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 10:16:30 -0800 John Grigg in message #18360 wrote in part, "We made a bet that if nano-replicators are in homes by 2030, she will have to treat me to dinner at a nice restaurant! And if not, than I'm the one footing the bill!" So you win the bet, go to a restaurant to collect and discover that there are no charges for the food because all recipes for even the most exotic gourmet preparations were encoded into everyone's nanotech replicators via the internet. Food in all imaginable forms has become as cheap as dirt (which is what you scoop into the nanoreplicator anyway). So you figure you will collect anyway because there will be "places to go" which serve the free food with "atmosphere" which was part of the reason people went to restaurants to begin with. You will have human "servers" who will walk up to your table overlooking a beautiful waterfall, for example, take your order, go into the "kitchen" where they scoop some dirt into a replicator to grow your food, and then carry the plates out to your table. She will have to foot the bill for the "atmosphere" and human service. But then you find out that some years ago EVERY "restaurant" using virtual reality technology could produce ANY environment imaginable AND these too became cheaper than dirt because the programs were spread across the internet through contests from creative artists who simply wanted to prove to the world that they could "one up" their competition. AND even the need for the human "servers" was fabricated at will through the VR (virtual reality) programs. So restaurants went completely out of business because anyone anywhere did not have to GO anywhere to have a gourmet dinner seated on the rings of Saturn served by the Royal Family. They could experience it as a totally real event anywhere at all - even in their (now free) replicated and totally portable habitat two room domestic shelter (home). Before that all came to pass, the nanoreplicators had already produced clothing to order in the same fashion, as well as any other material object formerly created through "normal" design and manufacture. The whole of the commercial transportation industry collapsed for lack of need as nothing had to delivered anywhere any longer. The expression "grow your own" had taken on hefty economic meaning. Prior to that, the commodities market collapsed due to the Alchemist Conspiracy where the nanoreplicator codes for most raw materials (pork bellies, cotton, wheat, corn, rice, wool, etc.) were released to the world through the internet by nano pirates, in the same way that encryption codes for information had been released to the world in the late 1990's through the internet. With the loss of a need for a commodities market as well as transportation, wholesale and retail industries, most of the world's stock markets closed as companies were simply no longer needed. Grudgingly, various governments noted the radical drop in the need for generating currency (electronic or paper) and accordingly cut back on the production of new money while having to abandon taxation of income and trade as both of these had virtually (pun intended) vanished. The use of money came to a grinding halt as a useful means of measuring trade and exchange and the need for trade, barter and exchange returned to the same level of existence as the dinosaurs. At the same time, the average human being for the first time in recorded history had more material wealth than all the kings and emperors of history combined. And so now how do you collect your bet? I'd suggest you demand a kiss. Just my opinion, George Smith CI member _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18363