John Berry <[email protected]> wrote: I just had another idea. > > Self sufficiency. > > The idea is that with sufficient advances in 3D printers and robots. > And growing your own food in a personal multi level garden... >
Let me again point out that Arthur Clarke described this and all of the other ideas in this discussion in "Profiles of the Future" in 1963. He described a "replicator" which is the ultimate form of 3D printer: "The advent of the replicator would mean the end of all factories, and perhaps all transportation of raw materials and all farming. The entire structure of industry and commerce, as it is now organized, would cease to exist. Every family would produce all that it needed on the spot—as, indeed, it has had to do throughout most of human history. The present machine era of mass production would then be seen as a brief interregnum between two far longer periods of self-sufficiency, and the only valuable items of exchange would be the matrices, or recordings, which had to be inserted in the replicator to control its creations." . . . A society based on the replicator would be so completely different from ours that the present debate between capitalism and communism would become quite meaningless. All material possessions would be literally as cheap as dirt. Soiled handkerchiefs, diamond tiaras, Mona Lisas totally indistinguishable from the original, once-worn mink stoles, half-consumed bottles of the most superb champagnes—all would go back into the hopper when they were no longer required. Even the furniture in the house of the future might cease to exist when it was not actually in use. At first sight, it might seem that nothing could be of any real value in this utopia of infinite riches—this world beyond the wildest dreams of Aladdin. This is a superficial reaction, such as might be expected from a tenth century monk if you told him that one day every man could possess all the books he could possibly read. The invention of the printing press has not made books less valuable, or less appreciated, because they are now among the commonest instead of the rarest of objects. Nor has music lost its charms, now that any amount can be obtained at the turn of a switch. . . ." - Jed
