Economic game changers: Replicators

[jonesy]

Iain M Banks wrote an interesting series called Culture dealing with a post commodity economy. I think a point is missing in the preceding analyses: services remain finite and thus scarce, unless you are also bending the force of infinite material towards self replicating AI.

Hey, wow. Take a replicator, a solar power generator, and the best currently available computer. Use the massive computer cluster to calculate a better system. Repeat ad nauseum while you build up to an AI creation level. Use waste calculation power to solve all math problems.

 

[RedTonic]

[MENTION=10324]jonesy[/MENTION] I can't tell if you're just being facetious at me, or agreeing.

 

[Umbran]

Now let's try the opposite. Assume that you can set them to allow or disallow any particular thing. Someone hacks the system and disallows brain cells. Ouch.

Why be so fancy? Disallow anything more than 6" above the teleporter's pad. Mommy goes in, and only her Manolo Blahniks come out. Oh, and her feet.

Use the energy reaped to fuel your replicator!

 

[jonesy]

[MENTION=10324]jonesy[/MENTION] I can't tell if you're just being facetious at me, or agreeing.

Agreeing.

The premise of a replicator is either an impossible device, or a device which consumes vast amounts of resources and energy. In either case they would be extremely useful.

 

[RedTonic]

I seem to remember a William Gibson book that dealt with a replicator prototype. I think it may have been Idoru but I could be wrong.

 

[jonesy]

The premise of a replicator is either an impossible device, or a device which consumes vast amounts of resources and energy. In either case they would be extremely useful.

I just went back and read what I said there. An impossible device would indeed be extremely useful.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A replicator needs either base materials to operate from, or an energy supply more copious than anything humankind has ever really considered. If you take the *entire* energy consumption of the United States in 2005 (100 quadrillion BTU, or thereabouts), you could make one single moderately sized car. And that's it.

I'm thinking either a power cord to the sun and/or we use geothermal from Io to charge up some batteries...

As I recall, though, there was some discussion- RW and, from that, in Sci-Fi- about power generation (in space) by having an extremely long cable trailing another body. Ring any bells?

 

[Krensky]

yeah, but commerce is still the same. We have the same needs, just different methods of delivery.

But commerce is not the same in a post-scarcity economy. Both market and planned economic theories are based on the premise of material scarcity. By definition a economic system based on the sort of automated manufacturing we're discussing has, for practical purposes, no material scarcity.

Replicators would eliminate needs

They do not eliminate needs. They, typically, eliminate scarcity. They don't necessarily even do that. Go read the Diamond Age.

And you'd need an empire, a single authority, for a transporter world, sure. Some provinces with autonomy, like Texas and England, but in general you'd want some kind of control everywhere.

That massively depends on the nature of human society at the time and the specifics of the transporter. As I said, Niven's essay on teleportation in All the Myriad Ways discusses this and is almost required reading in this field of futurism.

English would become the only language in a Transporter world, like on the internet. Like in Europe, every restaurant would have multilingual menus. Canada is used to that stuff: all packages have English and French on them.

Nah, Esperanto will win.

Seriously though, modern English may be the base but you'll wind up with a patois, fusion thing in a few generations without concerted effort. The people speaking it may still call it English, especially since English has always been a patois to some degree.

 

[Krensky]

Up to a point.

If enough aspects of expertise are programmable into a computer, it becomes ubiquitous. A food replicator programmed with the recipes of Gordon Ramsay, for instance, could deliver a stunning version of whatever you ordered.

However, it WOULD be the same every time. Changing a recipe on the fly; creating new recipes; all that kind of skill would still remain in short supply.

IOW, you could deliver perfectly reproduceable results worldwide, but creativity and flexibility would still be scarce commodity.

And people would still line up and pay Whufie to eat food grown in the ground, picked by hand, and prepared by Gordon Ramsay. That's why you need Rep. Because if you're not someone people give a crap about, no one will want to be in the same room with you. Mr Ramsay won't want to do the favor of cooking for you either. You're more then welcome to give him some Rep by downloading and using his recipes in your cornucopia machine, but it won't have been something made by hand by him for real food that a real person put time and effort out to grow.

 

[Krensky]

Hey, wow. Take a replicator, a solar power generator, and the best currently available computer. Use the massive computer cluster to calculate a better system. Repeat ad nauseum while you build up to an AI creation level. Use waste calculation power to solve all math problems.

Then flee in terror as the AI decides that you're nothing more then additional raw material for the system. If you're lucky it might forcibly upload your consciouness first. Or maybe that's not lucky.

Seed AI is dangerous. Potentially more dangerous then every other bit of technology and science put together.

Hard take off singularities are not fun for those on the inside.