Economic Analysis of the Nanotech Future 188
nweaver writes "Economic Historian and Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong has created an analysis on his Web Log on the economic implications of Nanotechnology. His observations are based on what previously happened with the Industrial Revolution (and other economic shifts in general) and using this to speculate what Nanotech will do to the economy: who wins (technical/knowledge workers), who loses (manufacturing), and what changes (costs of products)."
Raises interesting questions (Score:2, Interesting)
nanotech has a big future.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the wave of the future (Score:3, Interesting)
The correct way to enhance ourselves is the technique outlined by Science Fiction Author Larry Niven. In variou Niven novels and short stories, the characters can live for hundreds of years by means of organ banks. If you lose an arm, use nanotechnology to put on a new arm. Of course, this will require two developments: improved nanotechnology, and the development of organ banks for all body parts. Probably this will lead to the death penalty becoming the standard punishmnent for every minor crime, so as to keep the organ banks full of fresh organs, allowing rich people to live forever at the expense of everybody else.
I hope this happens within my lifetime, as it is a Utopian scenario indeed.
Interesting . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
This is also analogous to the technological revolution, because a much higher number of workers were left unemployed by the increase in productivity than moved to the cities and became factory workers -- witness the enormous social turmoil at the turn of the century. The relatively higher American education levels probably had a much greater impact in the service sector than manufacturing 50-100 years ago. Although level of education has picked up somewhat in the last decade or so (concurrent with America's resurgent dominance in non-military technology), compared to other industrialized countries American education below the college level simply sucks.
Frontiers and Nanotech (Score:3, Interesting)
I would also suggest folks look at the Nanotechnology timeline [slashdot.org] Sean Morgan did. Best estimates are this will unfold the next 20 years or so. The nice thing about Morgan's work is that he talks about some of the incremental advancements between now and then.
Freudian Slips While Reading (Score:3, Interesting)
At first glance I read "Economic Analysis of the Nanotech Failure". I'm not sure if it was trying to say Nanotech is going nowhere, or that the grey goop effect will make pollution look like a spot on one's trousers by comparison.
For my part, I'm not really thrilled by Nanotechnology. It's like being thrilled by quantumn mechanics. Sure it's neat, but unless you are a researcher it's not going to be used in anything you buy, build, or are likely to use. Oooo, it will make already small computer chips smaller. Whoopie. The size of a computing device is currently limited by the size of the battery, power supply, or human interface device.
As far as medical uses, the nanotechnology itself is useless without some way of coordinating the activity of millions of simple robots. That technology isn't nanotechnology. I call the ability to harness millions of independent units "Taonology", and it's first application will be social engineering.
(Checking time-traveler's guide to 2003 to make sure it's been invented.) Scratch that. But when it happens, act surprised.
Re:Raises interesting questions (Score:3, Interesting)
There will *always* be stuff which is scarce. Maybe it will be real estate. Maybe we will continue to impose artificial scarcity (i.e. intellectual property) on certain things. Maybe there will be some completely arbitrary measure of "status" that people value.
Read science fiction stories for examples of what will be scarce. (The "status" thing really was in a rather crummy science fiction story I read once.)
Whatever it is, scarce goods will have value, and some economy based around that value will exist.
Answer #2:
Perhaps we can build robots to do the bad work for us.
I believe that artificial intelligence is possible with enough processing power (and if we have nanotech, we will be capable of exceeding the processing power per cm^3 of our brains).
More important than just creating smarter versions of ourselves, though, is the concept of intelligence without personality. Something which is able to reason, but which does not have a "being" behind it.
Artificial intelligence built around this concept would not "turn on us" like the matrix. There would be no moral issues with shutting it off after asking it to solve a problem.
Re:Raises interesting questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course there are some fields where we already have such "duplictor" based business models. The printing press made books the 1st such field. Now, of course, we have the same thing with music, software, and other information based businesses.
-Information wants to be free the same way that jewelry wants to be free.
Re:Nanotech is XXIst century AI (Score:4, Interesting)
Superconductivity is a pipe dream, in that even that absolutely enormous potential savings, multiplied by all the similar situations elsewhere in the world, isn't motivating anyone to build a working superconducting transmission system and save that enormous amount of wasted power. If it's feasable, why hasn't a demand that large produced a result? The theoretical benefits of superconductivity certainly ARE large enough to matter - ergo, the limitation must be practice, not theory.
As a lesser example, Superconducting Magnetic Levitation was supposed to enable a generation of high speed trains that could compete with the aircraft industry. The Japanese just set a train speed record of 585 Km/h. They did it with a non-supercoducting system. Why did they do it the "hard way", if superconducting technology is more than a laboratory curiosity?
Re:Raises interesting questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, in that universe it seems pretty clear that not all things replicate equally well. Many luxury goods (wines, brandy, foods). Also some necessities - if you could replicate di-lithium crystals the society would not work the way it does. Nano would also work this way. Unlike the start trek universe 'tea, earl grey, hot' would be one of those things that molecular mfg wouldn't work that well for. There is a nano factory called a tea plant that produces a concentrated substance in its leaves that does a great job. Nano would/could go a long way to up yields on tea, automate care (aphid hunting nanobots would be preferable to pesticides) but the tea plantations are there to stay. Someone(s) still going to have to have to run the operation. Probably someone that is a hard core tea geek (yes, they exist) would do 80% for love of the process and 20% for those luxury goods that don't replicate well (maybe he's also a stinky cheese geek or collects antiques).
So, who cleans the toilets? A toilet that needs a human to clean it is a poorly designed toilet - why buy that model? "the droids would clean it" is a valid answer to some extent, but for the toilet example it should just be self cleaning.
In the larger sense it makes sense to ask "who does the unpleasant jobs, whatever they may be, there are bound to be some". As many reasons as there are people, I suppose. In the Federation we see many of these things done by star fleet folks. They do it for pride of position, duty, a tradition of public service, earning their way into the company of those they respect (same reason we humiliate recruits in boot camp). Hard scrabble miners do it in hopes of great riches (what does that mean? It clearly still means something) and probably because they don't 'play well with others' and couldn't get on in more civilized parts.
If pople are freed of having to spend most of they waking hours on basic survival they will find thngs to do. Some destructive, some stupid, some brilliant and some that areas that look to other people as crazy (why would someone spend 4+ hours a day working in a garden if they didn't need the $$/food?).