Economic game changers: Replicators

[jefgorbach]

Though the technologies may be related, there is one crucial difference: with a transporter, YOU supply all the mass and particular elements on on end required on the other. With a replicator, you have to have a ready supply of mass to convert into the desired form.

Not really. Looking past the techno-babble reveals they are SAME machine with
"teleporter" and "replicator" merely terms of convenience to differentiate whether the source-code is supposed to be deleted post-replication (teleporter) or not (replicator).

Startrek's clone-n-kill ethics are generally overlooked/hand waved, however several stories involving transporter accidents verify the fact the original body's pattern is supposed to be deleted from the system once they have been successfully replicated at their destination.

William Riker's clone is a good example of such an error being allowed to continue living because of special circumstances and allowed to established a separate identity (Thomas Riker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

 

[Umbran]

William Riker's clone is a good example of such an error being allowed to continue living because of special circumstances and allowed to established a separate identity (Thomas Riker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

If you want real geekery, no, that particular example does not illustrate what you want. Ryker's duplicate was created external to the transporter system itself - the transporter beam got split in the atmosphere (and I guess picked up one body's mass worth of energy in the process).

My recollection is that Trek's official technobabble is that a transporter system cannot "keep the pattern" - in a standard replicator a bunch of energy is pumped in, and a computer holds the possible patterns to replicate. But, the pattern of a living creature is too large and complex even for a Trek computer to hold - so the information is stored within the energy of the deconstructed object (in the oft-referenced "pattern bufffer"), not in a separate computer. Reassembling the person wipes the pattern, because the medium of data storage is the same as the material used to build the body.

I think the assumption is, if Transporters and Replicators existed and had a zero cost to use them. How would that change society?

I don't think we can say, because those (or any) technology at zero (or even near-zero) cost has other implications. Zero-cost transport, for example, is the basis of a perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion means infinite energy. Infinite energy means we can feed, clothe, house, and entertain everyone.

What's going to have a bigger impact on society as we know it - eliminating all poverty and need on the planet, or being able to ship a package to Aunt Martha instantaneously?