ems%nanotech@princeton.edu (12/05/90)
As requested, one possible pathway.
Steps to Self-sufficiency via Nanotechnology
These few nanotechnology changes outlined here are really trivial
first steps. No flashy AI or intelligence enhancement applied. But
even so the effects rapidly become gigantic.
ENERGY
I think that the first step toward individual self-sufficiency
would have to be your energy supply. Your first nanokit should
contain devices that convert your lawn, roof shingles, and siding
into efficient photoconverter cells, and also build a storage
unit of some kind in your basement. (The battery could be chemical,
but it might be simpler and more efficient if it contained millions
of tiny flywheels). If your lawn is big enough, sell power back
to the public utilities for cash. But not for long. Unless nanokit
one is made illegal, there won't *be* any public power utilities after
a while.
FOOD
Having solved the energy problem, you'll next want to stop flushing
valuable organics into the sewers, and instead purify and refine
them into next week's meals using your nanorefinery kit. This should
happen far out of sight for the squeamish, in one of your sub-basements.
(Nanotech homeowners will probably excavate one or more sub-basement
volumes, "mining" for raw construction materials.) Whomever is cooking
will program next week's menu into the master computer, and the food
refinery will take it from there. In passing, you've helped solve 95%
of the pollution problem. This nanokit eliminates the agribusiness
and the waste disposal industries. (If you don't have any debts, at
this point you can quit your job.)
CLOTHING
Clothing is easy, if you want it. (Remember, you no longer need to
leave your house :-) You'll own one nanosuit, which will keep itself
(and you) scrupulously clean, and alter it's colors, textures, and
style on command. Clothing styles may become outlandish over time.
It'll be nice to find yourself already in pajamas as you approach the
bed at night, without having changed. You'll reclaim all your closet
space and use it for equipment storage. Wasn't there once a clothing
industry?
SHELTER
A much larger version of the clothing nanokit will handle your home.
As above it will keep itself clean and change colors, textures, and
style on command, although probably not as frequently as with clothing.
Imagine the fights to come with your kids. ("Aw Dad, it's been a
Scottish castle an entire month now, can't we change it please?")
"Housing starts" drop to nearly zero, of course.
TRANSPORTATION
Nanokit number three could convert your automobile to run on hydrogen
and add a water cracking plant to your basement industry. Or perhaps
some portion of the mega-flywheel batteries from nanokit one above
would also serve here. In either case, no more auto pollution, and
no more gasoline bills either. Cars will also "heal" their dents,
and periodically regrow tire tread. Goodbye automakers, at least as
we presently know them.
COMMUNICATION
This is a stickler. While not strictly necessary for self-sufficiency,
it is an ability we baseline humans won't want to give up. Yet it
requires cooperation. Communication protocols and hardware interface
standards will have to be agreed upon. Perhaps we'll give everyone
a personal ethernet address. Each homeowner could grow their "LAN"
and interface with their nearest neighbors at property boundaries.
Misanthropes would have unlisted addresses. Whither the phone company?
HEALTH/MEDICAL
Also a tough one. It's likely going to be a rare and exceptional
individual who has the combined encyclopaedic medical knowledge and
superior programming skills to be completely self-sufficient in this
area, as long as we remain baseline humans. It would be a shame to
blow immortality just because of a program bug. Most of us are going
to have to hire the services of a clinic for this. The die-hard
(pun accidental, really) individualists could limit this to one visit
by having the clinic drastically simplify their physiology. At least
doctors and programmers will still be employed.
INCOME
The advent of nanotechnology is bound to do drastic things to the
economy. So many industries will collapse that it will look like a
deep depression by all standard measures, even while the average
person's standard of living is actually shooting up out of sight.
Infrastructure (roads, law enforcement, etc) will still need to be
supported. The average person will still need to purchase services,
rare trace elements, and information from other sources, and will most
likely no longer have a conventional salary (after the cascading
effects of the collapse of major industries) with which to pay
for them. If you are smart you'll pay off all your major debts
before the nanotech crunch comes, or prepare to be foreclosed.
Unless you're one of the lucky few with sufficient wealth in land,
rare elements, and/or information, you'll find yourself having to
barter personal service in exchange for these things. It looks
like we'll nearly all be self-employed "professional" persons. Also,
various forms of accreditation/certification will assume a much
larger importance. People will naturally prefer the services of
a *trained* nanotech medical wizard, for instance, rather than the
average self-taught variety. I'd like to think that enlightened
employers will provide the first five "nanokits" above, along with
basic training, and that employees will graciously accept this,
before the company doors get shut for good, but I bet it won't
happen that easily, if we just leave it up to human nature. Just
look at how many people stubbornly resist new technologies now.
Naturally there are short-cuts to all of this. If you're radical
enough to use the earliest nanotech to transform yourself into a
completely inorganic form, and go into space for your raw materials,
you'll reduce your basic human needs drastically.
Ed Strongdmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) (12/06/90)
In article <Dec.4.22.10.16.1990.24007@athos.rutgers.edu> ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: >TRANSPORTATION > >Nanokit number three could convert your automobile to run on hydrogen >and add a water cracking plant to your basement industry. Or perhaps [ etc. ] >COMMUNICATION > >This is a stickler. While not strictly necessary for self-sufficiency, >it is an ability we baseline humans won't want to give up. Yet it I admit to having been struck by the odd contrast between your treatment of transportation and communication. You talk about communication as something which we will want to preserve for perhaps frivolous reasons, while physical mobility survives as some unquestioned necessity? Physical mobility is just another form of communication, an expensive, dangerous, method with long latency but high throughput. So everything you say about the one goes for the other. Communication will remain strictly necessary for self-sufficiency. Without communication, conflict will ensue. (Even with it, conflict will ensue, but decreasing asymptotically to zero with increasing communication.) Even if everyone is "self-sufficient", something will always be scarce and desired, and people will want to compete for it. Thus if you shut yourself off entirely from all communication with the outside, eventually your neighbors will attack you, or turn your home into a national park, or pass a law saying you can't do this or that. Knowledge will also continue to increase forever, and you will naturally want to share in it. >requires cooperation. Communication protocols and hardware interface >standards will have to be agreed upon. Perhaps we'll give everyone >a personal ethernet address. Protocols and standards are necessary only because we live in Information Poverty. If you have enough information processing power available, you can afford to cope with chaos. For example, if you have a computer that is smart enough to figure out how to talk to all the other computers, you don't necessarily have to care whether all those other computers are perfectly standardized. Today, of course, nobody can afford such a waste of computer power, because it is too scarce (which is what I call Information Poverty). Thus we realize a high return by investing in standards, since they reduce information-processing overhead. Standards are constraining, however, and people don't like constraints. Most people would do things whatever way they like, rather than according to someone else's schedule, agenda, specification, etc. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171
peb@uunet.uu.net (Paul Baclaski) (12/06/90)
In article <Dec.4.22.10.16.1990.24007@athos.rutgers.edu>, ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: > ENERGY > > I think that the first step toward individual self-sufficiency > would have to be your energy supply. I don't know about you, but my biggest bill is for rent, not electricity. There are no indications that rent/mortgages and taxes will disappear with nanotechnology. Certainly, it will be possible to live almost anywhere, assuming you can afford the telecommunications costs (perhaps communications will be the number one expense). > CLOTHING > >Wasn't there once a clothing industry? The clothing industry would evolve into a software industry. Most clothing making is computer controlled now and having a clothing maker in your home means you could simple download the software instead of going to the store (although you will want to preview the stuff before buying it). Note that this assumes that having a clothing maker in your home is economically viable. The main advantage of having it in your home would be that transportation/distribution costs would be saved. You must assume that the raw materials are available to make this work. > SHELTER > "Housing starts" drop to nearly zero, of course. Zoning will be an impediment here--the total effect of a neighbohood is a common resource that can be afflicted with the Tragedy of the Commons problem. Some places have no zoning now (e.g., Houston) while some have too much zoning (plus homeowners associations that are truely evil). Of course, one could take matters into one's own hands with a cyberspace home--it might look simple in reality, but with cyberspace clothing, it is anything you want. (E.g., The Futurlogical Congress, by Stanslaw Lem). > COMMUNICATION > > Whither the phone company? I'm sure the phone company will be happy to provide high bandwidth communications for a price. > > HEALTH/MEDICAL > > Also a tough one. If the knowledge acquision problem is solved, having medical expert systems is not far fetched... > INCOME > > The advent of nanotechnology is bound to do drastic things to the > economy. So many industries will collapse that it will look like a > deep depression by all standard measures, even while the average > person's standard of living is actually shooting up out of sight. In general, it does not make sense to assume that all industries affected will disappear--manufacturing industries will turn into service industries that provide software for your equipment. The people who will have a tough time adapting are the poorly educated and the people who have jobs that can be easily automated. Entertainment is likely to be the biggest industry of all--and there is no indication at present that it can be automated (even if it could be automated, there is not clear that that would be an advantage). >From: hibbert@xanadu.com (Chris Hibbert): >In the case of food, it's even more obvious that the >user has to be able to handle a task that can't be made simpler than >programming the VCR, which I'm told is beyond many of the consumers >you'd need to sell to in order to make a reasonable size market. Sad but true. However, picking out clothes from a catalog of software designs should be pretty simple. The current generation of video game playing kids will probably find vcr controls pretty simple, on the other hand. Paul E. Baclaski peb@autodesk.com
steve@apple.com (Steve Savitzky) (12/07/90)
In article <Dec.6.02.53.41.1990.23014@athos.rutgers.edu> autodesk!peb@uunet.uu.net (Paul Baclaski) writes: In article <Dec.4.22.10.16.1990.24007@athos.rutgers.edu>, ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: > CLOTHING > >Wasn't there once a clothing industry? The clothing industry would evolve into a software industry. Most clothing making is computer controlled now and having a clothing maker in your home means you could simple download the software instead of going to the store (although you will want to preview the stuff before buying it). Note that this assumes that having a clothing maker in your home is economically viable. The main advantage of having it in your home would be that transportation/distribution costs would be saved. You must assume that the raw materials are available to make this work. The clothing industry goes away completely. Clothing would be made of intelligent fibers that can change their color, weave, and general configuration on command. You might put on or take off more fibers for different effects, but a rather small supply would be enough for anyone. You'd have to feed them, of course. > SHELTER > "Housing starts" drop to nearly zero, of course. [zoning: omitted] Of course, one could take matters into one's own hands with a cyberspace home--it might look simple in reality, but with cyberspace clothing, it is anything you want. (E.g., The Futurlogical Congress, by Stanslaw Lem). Brilliant bricks. -- \ --Steve Savitzky-- \ ADVANsoft Research Corp \ REAL hackers use an AXE! \ \ steve@advansoft.COM \ 4301 Great America Pkwy \ #include<disclaimer.h> \ \ arc!steve@apple.COM \ Santa Clara, CA 95954 \ 408-727-3357 \ \__ steve@arc.UUCP _________________________________________________________ [This set of exchanges points out that we need to start being more precise about what stage of development of the technology we are talking about. Technologically, we could build a clothes-making machine right now; nanotech makes it economical. We could not build intelligent fibers now, at any price; there is a significant difference in kind between the two capabilities. Nanotechnology is not going to be a technological plateau--it's going to be steeper than where we're standing now! --JoSH]
ems@buttermilk.princeton.edu (Ed Strong) (12/07/90)
In article <Dec.6.02.03.48.1990.22492@athos.rutgers.edu> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes: > >In article <Dec.4.22.10.16.1990.24007@athos.rutgers.edu> ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: >>TRANSPORTATION >> >>Nanokit number three could convert your automobile to run on hydrogen >>and add a water cracking plant to your basement industry. Or perhaps > >[ etc. ] > >>COMMUNICATION >> >>This is a stickler. While not strictly necessary for self-sufficiency, >>it is an ability we baseline humans won't want to give up. Yet it > >I admit to having been struck by the odd contrast between your treatment >of transportation and communication. You talk about communication as >something which we will want to preserve for perhaps frivolous >reasons, while physical mobility survives as some unquestioned >necessity? Physical mobility is just another form of communication, an >expensive, dangerous, method with long latency but high throughput. So >everything you say about the one goes for the other. .. >Communication will remain strictly necessary for self-sufficiency. .. The reason I drew a distinction between transportation and communication, is that communication requires another person to interact with, and so contradicts the theme of this thread, self-sufficiency. If you are *really* self-sufficient, and your neighbors are as well, why should they bother you? Transportation, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily require cooperating with another person. .. >Knowledge will also continue to increase forever, and you will naturally >want to share in it. .. I agree, but this is getting away from self-sufficiency. You may *want* to talk, but do you *need* to talk? .. >Standards are constraining, however, and people don't like constraints. >Most people would do things whatever way they like, rather than >according to someone else's schedule, agenda, specification, etc. ... The thread is (was?) first steps to self-sufficiency. Based on that I assumed there wouldn't be unlimited computer and/or AI power available at first, only relatively simple one function "kits". Even so, the basic steps outlined would have a tremendous impact. Also, as part of these first steps I included the assumption that average joes wouldn't automatically use nanotechnology in the cleverest ways possible, at first, but "merely" as replacements for existing devices. After all, we don't use the technology we already have in the best ways. (I still wish for a self-directed car. Maybe before I'm a grandfather....) .. >Dan Mocsny Snail: >Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 > dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati >513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ed Strong, Technical Staff Member ems@princeton.edu Princeton University (609) 258-1747 35 Olden Street Department of Computer Science Princeton, NJ 08544-2087 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (12/14/90)
In article <Dec.7.03.46.25.1990.17087@athos.rutgers.edu> arc!steve@apple.com (Steve Savitzky) writes: In article <Dec.6.02.53.41.1990.23014@athos.rutgers.edu> autodesk!peb@uunet.uu.net (Paul Baclaski) writes: Of course, one could take matters into one's own hands with a cyberspace home--it might look simple in reality, but with cyberspace clothing, it is anything you want. (E.g., The Futurlogical Congress, by Stanslaw Lem). Brilliant bricks. [This set of exchanges points out that we need to start being more precise about what stage of development of the technology we are talking about. Technologically, we could build a clothes-making machine right now; nanotech makes it economical. We could not build intelligent fibers now, at any price; there is a significant difference in kind between the two capabilities. Nanotechnology is not going to be a technological plateau--it's going to be steeper than where we're standing now! --JoSH] Brilliant bricks sound like a brilliant idea! Seriously, we've all played at sometime or other building houses out of Legos or some similar lock-together toy bricks. Imagine a house consisting only of a foundation, lock together modules, and robots to assemble/reassemble the building. The rest is software. Such a house might initially cost several times what a conventional house would (ignoring for the moment the cost of the software, especially for the mobile robots), but we can simulate the whole thing on a computer. If nothing else, such a house-building software project would be a significant step toward the software we will eventually need for true nanotech. However, such "infinitely mutable" houses might be worth some extra initial cost. In fact, if construction codes were made sensible instead of politically correct, such houses could be substantially cheaper than stick built houses. The technology to build houses efficiently using centrally constructed modules already exists, and is only limited by construction codes. To elaborate a bit on the concept, I'm thinking of building houses from components similar to the mutable partitions used in many offices today, except that: The components would be designed for robot installation and assembly. To the greatest extent possible, replacing any component should only require removing K other components for some small K known for each component type. (In other words, you shouldn't have to take off the roof to move the front door.) Many of the components would be "intelligent," or at least programmable. This programming could be quite low tech. For example, a module with 6 water pipe ends should be configurable so that any input leads to any output, but this could be done with a network of standard valves. -- Robert I. Eachus with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...