I say we’ll have it in 20.
A longtime friend of mine has significant pieces of a replicator functioning in his lab right now. He’s no mad scientist but a respected engineer who is known for his broad technical interests. Right now he can’t make you a mug of Earl Grey (hot), but he can lay down in nanoseconds trillions of atoms of any abundant element, placing those atoms not just in perfect rows, but also placing them in intricate patterns with other atoms to create familiar combinations as well as new materials the world has never seen before.
He is already creating new materials with unique properties that couldn’t exist before simply because no materials have ever been built by men or women to such precision.
Except they have been built to such precision and are every day inside plants and animals, just as Kaku cites the ribosome building a baby.
What’s going on here seems to be the same ability to replicate on a nanoscale that allows plant cell walls to be straight and rectilinear. It’s a self-organizing effect. It may be what makes life even possible at all.
Of course what my friend has done is very crude. The present procedure could eliminate the need for rare earth elements. It could make a fabulous substrate for semiconductors and a few years from now might make the semiconductors themselves with sub-nanometer precision. But it’s a long way from there to Earl Grey (hot).
Yet look at our rate of progress in decoding the human genome — something that 30 years ago was impossible yet today the only question is how much it costs, with that cost dropping in line with Moore’s Law.
What will my friend be able to build with his machine a decade from now?
DNA may be the blueprint for life, but it is not the factory. Going from blueprint to prototype requires an additive building technology and this is one that might work and there may well be others.
There’s going to be trouble, I’m sure, as people and institutions are threatened by the implications of these technologies just as Kaku explains so well.
What comes to my mind is the famous Pogo cartoon where the little ‘possum says “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Do you remember the line from the next panel in that strip? Hardly anybody does.
“We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity.”
How can you think of nanotech replicators at a time like this 😉 You are the nerd’s nerd my friend. Glad someone has science on the mind, not another election.
There isn’t a column for me in this election. Not my bag.
It’s important to know one’s bag.
I’d love your take on the Republican’s ORCA program….
Tell Michio not to worry. Democrats in particular and politicians in general will want to tax this to death because they need to have the drop on us to control us.
Just a minor correction: Pogo is a ‘possum, not a muskrat.
Fixed, thanks.
4th baby wooo!
So how’s the new tech disk drive coming, Bob? As I recall, you were using additive building technology to fabricate the disk. My comment at the time was the tech to do it would be more important than the new drive.
Precisely. It’s what I am describing here. It took awhile to reach our 65mm diameter only to see the hard drive business fading. So we’re adjusting to silicon and other substrates such as graphene plus interesting diamagnetic materials and eventually complete solar cells. This video just puts the technical trend (we’re seeing aspects of it in many technical publications) in some perspective.
I’m trying to find a reference for that last quote – some sources suggest it was actually not in the original cartoon, or that it was from another strip. Do you have a link for it? I want to reference myself – too good not to use 🙂
Great question! I just did a search and of course the quote is all over the Internet, though not linked to any particular day’s Pogo strip. I may, in fact, have lifted it from Paul Saffo, who thinks I get all my best stuff from him, but I don’t really know. Still, it’s at least near the mark and made for a boffo ending, don’t you think?
I have looked extensively for the “insurmountable opportunity” quote, which I LOVE, and I am 98% sure that it does not exist as a Pogo comic. If it did, we would see images of it all over the web, since it’s an obvious nerd magnet.
Yet a quick google search indicates that Pogo gets the credit: https://www.dailyom.com/users/000/081/000081519.html “Favorite Quote:
We are faced with an insurmountable opportunity. (from the “Pogo” comic strip by Walt Kelly)”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogo_-_Earth_Day_1971_poster.jpg
Jon,
I’m a Pogo completist, having started my collection in the 1960s, and to the best of my knowledge and ability, I own at least one copy of every Pogo book ever published. In an hour or so of searching I haven’t yet found the follow-on quote that Bob cites. However, there’s no index to quotes or concordance that I’m aware of, so I may have missed something.
The most concise discussion of the phenomenon appears in “Pogo Files for Pogophiles,” by Selby Daley Kelly and Steve Thompson, published in 1992 by Spring Hollow Books (ISBN 0-945185-03-0 for the paperback version, which I have), on page 199. There is an introductory paragraph that mentions the first mention of a form of the quote in 1953’s “The Pogo Papers,” which I confirmed in my copy of that book. The full quote from Walt Kelly (text foreword, not comic strip dialog) is:
“There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward!”
After the introductory paragraph, there are three daily strips reprinted, copyrighted 7-11 1970, 8-8 1970, and “Earth Day 1971” (which I think was April 22). The last panel of each one ends with “…we have met the enemy and he is us!” with no follow-on dialog. The next day’s strips are not shown.
I have two other Pogo books from the early 1970s, “We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us” and “Impollutable Pogo,” and neither contains either the “we have met the enemy” quote or the “insurmountable opportunities” quote as far as I can tell, just slowly paging through both of them without reading everything. There is much discussion of pollution, but not those particular quotes.
Sorry I couldn’t find it for you!
Regards,
Dan Henderson
Sunnyvale, CA
Dan, while there is no index or Pogo-a-gogo concordance, you can create it through Evernote.
If you get the comics scanned in, the Evernote engine will pull words from the images when you conduct a search.
…as will Microsoft OneNote 2010 and perhaps other parts of the office suite, should you happen to have that on hand.
Fascinating, but at least I can still enjoy Earl Grey (hot) while we wait for the revolution to happen.
See –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)
In the virtual world we already control things at the bit level. Even then, we still haven’t made a HAL. That’s because we don’t have the knowledge to do that.
So, a nano replicator might give us the tool to make everything, but not the knowledge. As always, knowledge remains our most valuable asset.
I think he said ribosome, not risome
It’s fixed, thanks.
Could you go into more detail regarding this additive technology, or perhaps point me into the right direction for my own research? The closest technology that I am aware of is Chemical Vapor Deposition, 3D printing using laser sintering.
Ten years is not a whole lot of time.
Silicon Carbide and Graphene are two interesting materials that looking to be actively exploited for commercial use. I would gesture to say that Basalt is another material that would be revolutionary.
Thanks. 🙂
It’s not MY research. I’m sure there will be publications coming. But I’ll point out also that I wrote 20 years, not 10.
Charlie Stross’ “Singularity Sky” has an interesting take on handing replicators to an entire population with no restrictions, granted if I remember correctly the population was rather backwater so didn’t understand technology (hint, utter chaos ensues)
In the time frame I’m suggesting — 20 years — I don’t think we’ll see a Replicator in every garage. I suppose you could use a replicator to make replicator, but you aren’t going to pop a Buick out of something the size of a microwave oven.
The one thing that doesn’t really change here, either, is the need for raw materials. Even replicated steel requires iron and carbon. That may not sound like much but infrastructure is still required and elemental materials have to be processed and obtained.
What if a replicator was more like Robby from “Forbidden Planet” than a microwave oven? Given enough energy, raw material and information it could build you a Buick.
About the movie, I thought the reference to “glass to wood and back” odd since one is made of silicon and the other of carbon. Not that we couldn’t eventually do it, but it would always be far more efficient to start with the right atoms.
The scary thing happening right now is that guy 3-D printing gun parts. While I may agree with the politics of his stance, I fear that he’s raising the profile of 3-D printing to the point where it will become an easy political attack point. Of course the real threat of 3-D printing isn’t guns – it’s hurting profits of companies whose business models are based on maintaining scarcity of “rare” parts.
But 3-D printing hurting some company’s profits aren’t a public rallying cry – “uncontrolled 3-D printing of guns” is.
For example, a quote on marijuana laws :
“Shortly before marijuana was banned by The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, new technologies were developed that made hemp a potential competitor with the newly-founded synthetic fiber and plastics industries. Hemp’s potential for producing paper also posed a threat to the timber industry (see New Billion-Dollar Crop). Evidence suggests that commercial interests having much to lose from hemp competition helped propagate reefer madness hysteria, and used their influence to lobby for Marijuana Prohibition. It is not known for certain if special interests conspired to destroy the hemp industry via Marijuana Prohibition, but enough evidence exists to raise the possibility. ”
(from: https://www.thc-ministry.net/untoldstory/hemp_5.html )
It’s not a smoking gun, but there is a real chance that commercial business model opposition to hemp had more to do with marijuana laws than drug issues. It may be the same type of thing with 3-D printing – the real lobbying will be commercial interests, but the noise will be about guns.
And you can publish porn with an inkjet printer, so I don’t think there will be a move to license 3D printers. And the hemp argument is a canard: the British used flax fiber in WW2 as a very credible alternative to modern composites. There are no restrictions on flax (linen) distribution, yet it hasn’t taken off.
All true, but that was also before the “Hollywood Era” of copyright, and before today’s patent trolls got their wind. I think there was a sea change somewhere in the 80’s or 90’s starting a trend that has only become really obnoxious in the past few years.
Think of the mobile phone IP battles and copyright lawsuits, and then imagine that people like that see 3-D printing as a threat. I was merely saying that they would use red herrings like guns as an up-front panic point.
On the other hand, there is also a rising tide against copyright and patent silliness, so just maybe if the 3D printer survives the next few years, it’ll be good to go.
Additive manufacturing will be with us from now on. There’s no going back. And while I’m sure there will be both patents and trolls, the commercial opportunities are far greater from exploiting the technology than limiting it.
I hope you’re right.
I’m posing straw-men here, and I think it’s important to knock them down, because 3-D printing can become a transforming and disruptive technology, and it’s important to let that have a chance. I also think my straw-men are potentially real.
In “The Forever Peace” Joe Haldeman had a future where they had a true general-purpose 3-d printer. (Nanotech-based of course, since the story was written in 1997.) In the story there was an “arranged accident” with an early Nano-Forge, and thereafter they were all kept under tight government control – for safety’s sake.
Have you ever looked at the licensing on a camera? Did you even know that modern cameras have license terms? Of course they do, since their moviemaking capabilities use patented IP, and therefore they have to have been licensed.
Turns out that on the terms of those licenses, you’re not allowed to go into the moneymaking movie business with one – no matter how good the quality. In order to make movies that make money, you have to buy a properly licensed camera – much more expensive. I’m sure that they include winning Americas Funniest Home Videos in this, and up to a point they probably won’t bother Star Trek fan films. But the capability is there.
Smush these together, and you have hobbyists with rep-rap and other “toy” 3-D printers that can do plastic, etc. But to do REAL additive technology, you need a “commercial grade” 3-D printer properly encumbered with patents that only corporations can buy – regardless of any real limitations. By the way, the “corporate-only” model neatly handles the gun issue, allows them to dismiss the plastic guns as “toys” and avoids angering the geek market, while still keeping the real capability in “the right hands.”
That’s odd. I’ve made my living for almost 20 years from professional video, making shows for major TV networks in 60+ countries and I’ve never once seen a contract provision concerning either the IP status of cameras or even what brand or type of cameras must specifically be used. This is for 14 projects so far. Three of those projects were specifically shot with prosumer and even consumer gear, by the way. So I’ll just take a leap here and say you are wrong on this one.
I think you’re below their radar. I have a year-old camera with 720p HD video, so I need to go look at my manual, in the fine print. I’ll let you know.
Just looked in my Nikon P7100 manual, in the pdf on the CDROM…
from page2, right after the “Trademark Information” secion :
AVC Patent Portfolio License
This product is licensed under the AVC Patent Portfolio License for the personal and
non-commercial use of a consumer to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded by a
consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be obtained from
MPEG LA, L.L.C.
See https://www.mpegla.com.
Cool video and article, as usual.
After the human genome was discovered, the main obstacle to decoding it was computational power, so Moore’s Law was the limiting factor on speed of progress. I think (I’m not a physicist) the principles that need to be clarified to get to Earl Grey Hot are fundamental enough that processing power is not the limiting factor, but the capacity of the field to produce and test theories. This is why we still don’t have strong AI.
That’s not my understanding. Now I know only slightly more than you do about this process, but the way it was explained to me I’d say it’s precisely an issue of requiring more processing power. What worked for the genome was tons of cash being thrown at it. Same here.
It wasn’t that simple. It was grants + computing + algorithms (or, new ways of thinking about the problem). Read Craig Venter’s “A Life Decoded”, Chapter 9: Shotgun Sequencing, for insights into how this was done at a fraction of the cost of the National Institute of Health program.
“DNA may be the blueprint for life, but it is not the factory” – that’s really profound on a bunch of different levels if you think about it.
I’m at work, so I can’t watch the video, but I’m not a fan of Kaku. Like Ray Kurzweil, he’s a really smart guy who knows a lot about a lot, but takes things to a ridiculous extreme. Based on your article, and what I’m guessing he says, he’s full of crap. We can convert lead to gold today (go alchemy!) using nuclear reactors and such, but it’s cost prohibitive, to say the least. Likewise, the only way you could have a replicator that creates a cup of tea (Earl Grey or otherwise) would be if you had an abundance of all of the elements needed to manufacture the cup and the tea (probably not that hard to do) and a lot of energy. A LOT of energy. And that’s just the raw materials. When it comes to the replicator itself, it’s one thing to have a 3D nanoprinter that builds an object out of a single relatively simple inorganic material, but it’s a whole ‘nuther thing if it’s building complex compounds (like ceramics) or organics.
A year ago you would have been correct, but this new process I am writing about requires very little energy. It’s a matter of helping — not forcing — atoms into the correct configurations. But you are right that elemental raw materials in great variety will be required to make good tea in a good cup.
I think one problem is it seems like Kaku and Cringely are talking about 2 slightly different ideas. The former mentioned in 100 years we could have nanobots able to make changes on the subatomic scale thus changing glass into wood or maybe a pile of trash into a cup of tea. The later is saying in 20 years we could have machines able to convert carefully selected and refined materials into useful devices, such as spools of threads into the latest fashions for only the cost of the energy and raw materials (which will not be zero).
It is as if Kaku is talking about what if Zero Point Modules (able to create energy from nothing) were real and then all the replies are talking about Fusion Reactors (able to create energy from deuterium). Sure from the point of view of people with neither the two invention seem to do the same thing but if someone already has Fusion Reactors the effects of a working ZPM will be huge.
I found this article in the Economist, is it the same technology you talking about?
https://www.economist.com/node/21552892
That’s the simplest form of additive manufacturing. Now imagine something similar but on an atomic scale.
I gather that one of your first projects will be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrimatic_drinks_dispenser#Nutrimatic_Drinks_Dispenser
“Share and Enjoy”
This guy appears on TV in the UK all the time, I wonder when he ever gets time to do any research. They come to him for outlandish futurology type thinking, and I tend to disregard everything he says.
He sounds like my brother.
I have a couple of his books (“Hyperspace” and “Beyond Einstein” IIRC) I started to read the former, but it seemed rather dense and hard to read, but that was many years ago, so I don’t really recall. I started on the latter a couple of years ago and it just seemed like, well, bad science. It was talking about string theory and stuff like that. Things which have not been proven, or even agreed upon by scientists, and he was writing about it like it was a done deal. It was a real turn off for me, because he was so sure of his facts. And, personally, I’m tired of everyone trotting out Einstein as if he was the only physicist in the 20th century who did anything.
But since then, I’ve been highly skeptical of Kaku.
I’ve read Ray Kurzweil’s references to the singularity. At the time, I thought it might happen, but was not likely. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen enough acceleration in technological progress to see what Ray was writing about.
In 1989 I read about the upcoming HDTV revolution, but it was another 15 years before I had the ability to record and watch HDTV. I first learned about 4K TV last year and last spring bought my first 4K camcorder. I just read that the ATSC (the folks that finalized HDTV in the USA) are already starting work on a 4K broadcast transition. HDTV is likely to last less then half the time NTSC did.
And there are engineers already perfecting electronic holographic video!
Bob’s prediction of 20 years seems pretty plausible to me.
I saw one of the recent Kurzweil documentaries. I honestly think that his inspiration for a lot of this was not because the science & technology was leading in this direction, but because he wants his dead father back (and doesn’t want to die himself). But I digress…
There are a number of fatal flaws in Kurzweil’s reasoning. One is, basically, that Moore’s Law can go on forever. It can’t. Now, that’s not to say that it won’t go far enough for what he wants, but it can’t go on forever, and saying that BECAUSE computers today are thousands of times faster than they were 20 years ago does not mean that they will be thousands of times faster 20 years from now. Another is that there will be some sort of magical brain interface device that will let us upload/download memories into computers. I use the word “magical” because other than some VERY crude devices, there hasn’t been any serious progress in this area in decades, so the idea that this will be a workable device in 25 years or so means that they have to have SOMETHING that works along the same lines today. Like a bionic eye or some other neural I/O device. But we don’t. It’s kind of like talking about space ships in Jules Verne’s day, when they didn’t even have airplanes.
If it’s possible to directly interface a computer into the brain a la the Matrix or whatever, we’re not going to see it by Kurzweil’s Singularity date (aka, his lifetime).
Interesting insight.
Isn’t almost everything people do an attempt at immortality? In one sense or another?
Many is the soul that has longed for immortality that does not know what to do with itself on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Or something like that.
One needs to be very careful where to download a copy of a brain to. For example, if there was no interface to outside objects or communication it would be a very boring place to be for all eternity.
I think they solved that problem for Captain Pike on the original Star Trek series. “At the two-part episode’s conclusion, Pike is reunited with Vina and given the illusion of perfect health.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Pike_(Star_Trek)#The_Menagerie
Yes, of course. Everyone is looking for immortality in some way or another. Usually by passing on their genes.
But Kurzweil’s just a bit more obvious about it. In the documentary they spend quite a bit of time on him talking about how he misses his father, and has a small warehouse full of all of his father’s notes & journals. He wants a machine in which he can dump all of his father’s documents, so that he can recreate the guy in the machine. So that’s the “wants dad back” part. Also, his date for the singularity is right around his 90th birthday, so that he’ll still be alive for it to happen (especially given the large quantities of vitamins and other supplements he consumes every day). Of course, even if it DOES work that way, he’s still going to die. It’s just that a copy of his mind will go on forever.
We still could use di-lithium crystals and Heisenberg compensators. Throw enough latinum around, and we might see them in our lifetimes. Another Space Race or a reasonable facsimile would be useful.
I’d also like to point out that someone with the writing skills of a Bob Cringely ought to pump up that particular legacy in detail, because government-based research programs can and do lead to exciting places.
If you are looking to achieve a utopian society, the way to go is not to create better tools. The way to go is to teach people to base their actions on reality rather than mere beliefs. Of course, it can be difficult to determine what is real rather than an illusion. (Illusions being such things as conventional wisdom, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and so on.)
Once people have been taught a particular belief, they usually are loath to abandon it. This is especially true if they have based their professional life on a certain set of beliefs. Would they want to give up these long-established beliefs when better beliefs come along? Probably not. They would be more apt to try destroying the new beliefs. (Everyone knows that the Earth is flat and is the center of the universe, don’t they? No, those old beliefs have been replaced by newer and better beliefs. Beliefs that are closer to reality.)
However, when you want to have a better life, you may want to replace some of your limiting beliefs with empowering beliefs. On the other hand, perhaps not.
I used to work with a gentleman who insisted that perception WAS reality.
I said, “I perceive that you are an a**hole. Is that the reality?”
Fear, like faith, often creates what at first, it only imagined.
I think I understand what you are trying to say, but Steve Martin performed “Atheists Ain’t Got No Songs” on Letterman a while back.
Existing under absolute conditions of reality would eliminate most art and entertainment.
Perhaps that’s the reality you imagined.
Gnarfle,
The only portion of reality I really care about is determining what is possible for me to achieve in life. I leave the bigger realities to those who can handle them wisely, which I cannot.
As to the beliefs that most of us use to guide our lives, I will follow those that are useful. As time and effort allows, I will gradually change certain beliefs as needed to improve my life.
I see no reason to deny myself the pleasures of art and entertainment.
I also see no reason to allow myself to be controlled by the powers that be. They seek mainly to enrich themselves while exploiting the rest of us (the 99%). To heck with them!
How very Viking of you!
Life is a constant search to find the cause of one’s own ignorance in order to more effectively use available reality.
Failure is the space where learning takes place.
Onward and upward.
Many thanks, Gnarfle.
Until I had received and understood my revelations, I never realized the extent that limiting (false) beliefs could cripple a person’s life. I also had lacked the courage to review my life and realize what a lazy, selfish jerk I had become later in life.
Now I can decide what to do with the rest of my life and implant whatever empowering beliefs are needed to get the tough jobs done.
A viking am I? Well, why not? Almost anything is possible now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFWA1A9XFi8
It’s never really clear whether there is scarcity in the Star Trek universe. In several episodes it is shown, such as the one with the freighter pilot whose thrusters break down, stranding Picard and Wesley (Last Mission, I think).
As a fan of the original series, I was going to ask what episode implied that Shatner’s world had no scarcity. If there were no scarcity, as in the example you gave, there would be no problems for the Star Trek crew to solve, making for a very uninteresting show. Enterprise disabled…no problem, just ask for another. As far as the replicator goes, I’ll settle for a small one…one that can make a real penny.
Ya’ll might want to investigate David Gerrold’s Voyage of the Star Wolf. Originally conceived as the ANTI-TREK TV Series about a ship and crew that can’t get no respect in spite of the ingenuity of the crew. DevHell killed it and he novelized it. And so it goes.
Mr. Cringely,
Yer site is broke.
Praps’ it don’ like IE8.
Works fine in my IE 8. Is it possible you “upgraded” to IE 9 and then switched back? Here is a list of repairs you could try: https://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/260739-web-pages-do-not-display-properly-any-browser.html#post2152700
I didn’t upgrade to IE8. I’m using XP on this particular computer. I’ve installed all the service packs and the CRITICAL updates. When I access the main page, I receive a “Message from webpage”. ! in a yellow triangle and the word Error. And an OK to click.
But trying to navigate away from the page has been producing a long slow death (LSD) and when I finally X out I get a THIS WINDOW IS BUSY.CLOSING MIGHT CAUSE PROBLEMS. DO YOU WANT TO CLOSE IT ANYWAY?
Just close it anyway and try the fixes I suggested, at least the ones that apply to XP. They are for general computer maintenence so they should fix the “want to close it anyway” issue.
Your friend’s process is fascinating. Can you go into more detail about it?
Couldn’t you just get the tech up to the level of producing Earl Grey and let Picard pop it into the microwave for a minute?
I think you’re making the same mistake that lots of people that don’t know structural chemistry make. We’ve known how to make really cool little things for a long time. It’s hard. Damn hard when you start trying to do the same thing ribosomes do. Going from something that looks like a really small 3D printer to making micro machines like ribosomes is not a difference in degree. It’s a difference in kind. I and a lot of people I know have been doing this stuff for a number of years and there’s nothing that’s shown up in the last 50 years that says what you’re talking about is right around the bend (20 years). There’s been no inflection point in our understanding of how to do this stuff. The only inflection is in the use of the term “nano”.
This is new and it has been already scaled in another lab to one meter in size.
The reason you can take “hamburgers and milkshakes and turn them into a baby in 9 months” is the incredible parallel processing that is used. It’s an exponential process, one cell becoming two, two becoming four, and so on.
If you were to try to lay down atoms one layer at a time, do you have any idea how long it would take to make something that weighs even a gram? Let’s say you wanted to build a diamond (a very simple 3d carbon lattice), that weighed a gram (5 carats). We’re talking about placing 5×10^22 atoms. Even if you placed a trillion atoms per second (!), it would still take you over 1500 years to accomplish!
My friend can place a trillion atoms PER NANOSECOND. Nothing so far has taken more than overnight and we’re talking materials up to 65mm wide at this point.
So this machine can process atoms faster than the faster super computer can calculate? It seems impossible this machine can process with atom-level-precision and still be that fast.
Bob,
Sorry, but this article is very poor. As a practicing condensed matter physicist, I can tell you that Michio Kaku knows nothing about this area (he’s become somewhat of a clown over the last 20 years). I’m sure/hope you are working with someone legit, but the claims you make here are absurd. More details may allow a better analysis.
best
I finally watched the video. HOLY COW!! Kaku is even worse than I thought! They should have interviewed him for “What the Do We Know?” He’d fit right in with this garbage! He talks about replicators as if they’re possible because they’re in “Star Trek,” and he says that you could turn a glass into wood with one. Then, he points out that today you can turn hamburgers into babies. Skipping over the more obvious short cuts he takes, how does one equate to the other? Turning organic matter into OTHER organic matter has been going on for literally billions of years. How do you turn a simple silicon dioxide structure (a glass) into a complex hydrocarbon structure (a piece of wood). Or are we transmuting elements now, as well?
[/rant]
We’ll be fine until they perfect the holodeck. Once that hits the street that will mark the end of all human progress – nobody will want to be anywhere but the holodeck.
It depends on how much a holodeck ticket costs. 🙂
we can all guess what the main use of holodeck technology will be, it won’t necessarily be progress . . .
The idea of the replicator and its effects on society have long been a subject of discussion, especially in SF.
That people lose their ability to gainfully contribute is not fundamentally affected by the existence of the replicator, though the transition may be painful. Physical products still have to be imagined, designed, tested and licensed before the instructions for their manufacture in a replicator can be distributed.
As has been mentioned, IP will still apply to those designs and that will still have a value to someone. It won’t be realistic (or even legal) for me to replicate the iPad I am writing this message on just as it’s not possible for me to spontaneously write or legally copy something like Photoshop. You might be able to download a free version of the same class of device but it might not be exactly what you want or be as good.
Replicators will also require feedstocks that have to be moved around and these resources also still have a value. If your design requires Cobalt or Aluminium, it still has to come from somewhere and be in a form the replicator can manage, unless your replicator also has the ability to change elements from one to another; not something that is remotely on the horizon for a desktop device.
Printer ink is a classic example of the high value that can be put on something that is hard to replicate. Not only that but not all replicators will be created equal, with the same capabilities, speed or size.
Replication (especially in the Star Trek universe) takes a lot of energy. Take the end-to-end costs of supporting a replicator and it might come out as being quite onerous.
Also it begs the question of why people do anything beyond basic subsistence. Is it just to acquire more stuff or is it to find solutions, expand knowledge, support our infrastructure or provide useful services or insights that have value to the culture?
These things require ingenuity, persistence and skills that are not the realm of the replicator but that of humans. That is probably the message that Star Trek would send.
I made a comment on another post a while back, to which someone responded with a reference to Marshall Brain’s “Manna” (http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm). That story is a more readable version of some thoughts I’ve had in my head for a long time.
That is, it appears to me that the trajectory for technology will eventually make all human labor obsolete. At least labor that can be profitable, assuming today’s market economy.
This ties in to the H1B visa issues that have been discussed here recently: ignoring the legality of how companies are using the H1B system, I feel like many people are offended that companies are looking for cheaper labor, followed by implicit arguments for domestic labor protections. But what about protecting our domestic labor supply from technology?
If one gets upset when a company hires a low-cost foreign worker rather than a native, will he also get upset when that company chooses a machine instead of a person?
Overall, I think the idea behind “Manna” is a looming reality: at some point, there will be a gross imbalance between the supply of human labor and the demand. It seems that the perfection and widespread availability of these nano replicators would only be a catalyst for this imbalance.
When virtually all of the needs (basic AND luxury) of humanity can be met at practically no cost, how can there be any jobs? And will a few super-elite control the means of production?
Note that I’m not arguing against them. I’m just saying, the technology itself could be quite disruptive. How society responds to the effects of such a dramatic change could be beyond dramatic.
I don’t know if this topic was addressed in the video, it’s blocked for me.
You’re not missing anything since you already know how a baby is manufactured.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .
There was the 40 hour work week.
That’s 8 hours a day; 5 days a week.
And man saw that it was good.
And Intel did walk upon the face of the silicon and IBM did prototype the PC.
And Corporate saw that it was good.
If you’re used to an 8 hour work day and your boss puts a PC on your desk, he expects you to get more work done in that 8 hours. Let’s call it 10 hours worth of work in an 8 hour day. (Define a metric!) The employee still sees his job as 8 hours a day. Using a computer, he finishes that 8 hours worth of work in 6 and goofs off the rest of the time. Give him a faster computer. 8 hours of work in 5; 3 hours to goof off. Faster. 8 in 4; Goof off = 4. Faster still . . . 8 in 3; 5 hours of primo goof off time.
In spite of the increase in the use of technology, the productivity gains are not there. Some “jobs” are better suited to the batch mode of computation. Those jobs disappear. I was chatting with a coupla cashiers lately. Their hours have been reduced to 20 a week. I didn’t ask if they had other jobs. While we were talking, a man approached and asked for a job application. He was informed they weren’t hiring. He wanted the manager’s name and number because he needed verification that he was looking for a job in order to collect his bennies.
I don’t have a summary.
Figger it out yourself.
I’ve been thinking a bit more of this subject. It may turn out that while this new manufacturing technique will allow the construction of new types of products, it might not be the most efficient to manufacture many existing products. In other words, it will make a great addition to the tool chest, but might not make the other tools obsolete.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a bit about a ‘macro’ technology that should be quite disruptive: smart, self replicating, self repairing robots. These robots could make use of conventional manufacturing techniques. All that is missing is the A.I. (yeah, I know that’s a big deal).
A self growing army of such robots could drastically lower the costs of large engineering projects. For example, build a few of them and send some into space with the capability of mining asteroids and the moon. Then wait a few years for them to build the infrastructure for a really large space station. In the meantime robots on the ground manufacture all the remaining components for the station as well as the rockets needed for delivery. All we need to do is supply the programming, raw materials, and energy. They’ll probably even help with those tasks.
As Matt pointed out, this will have a large impact on human labor.
Diamonds, gold by the ton.
Suddenly there is no wealth and no wealthy.
H.G. Wells would approve.
Everyone here does know that Kaku is almost certainly taking $ from NASSCOM, right?
So your jaunty, little lunar hopper is an additive manufacturing nano printer?
I’ll give you 10 bucks for a belt buckle that states “This has been mooned”
[…] – Just for fun, check out the video of Michio Kaku embedded in Cringely’s blog. How about that for starting a […]
Can we get Diamonds from Charcoal?
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Bob, any idea why my RSS feed continues to get this specific entry replicated over and over and over again? Every day this article appears anew, usually 2 or 3 times.
Everyone here does know Kaku is taking $ from NASSCOM, right?
Someday, we will stop calling it replication and begin calling it creation.
I remember I took an extra elective literary course in high school centered around the history and concepts of science fiction writing. Great course for a 16 year old kid. One of the topics discussed was the Frankenstein complex in our current cultural context. Terminator was the most obvious incarnation then. It’s interesting to think of how that has evolved and what that would be today.
As always Mr. Cringley, an idea that brings back memories and sets my imagination alight.
Actually, a better fictional model for nanotechnological abundance would be Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age.” In his fictional near future the basics of food, water, and clothing are freely dispensed (along with their embedded advertising) while the ‘wealthy’ purchase status-enhancing hand-made goods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age Sounds like it would make an interesting movie. Since it was published in 1995, the definition of “basics” could be expanded to include things no longer thought to be luxuries for the wealthy: air-conditioning, lots of power, transportation, fast food, fast internet access, instant portable communication and computation.
First of all, human beings have a basic nature that will not change, even if you have cheap fusion power and self replicating factories. the people will have the same basic issues, such as selfishness, greed, etc. These will simply manifest in different forms and variations of the same form. Even so, society would definitely change with nanofactories and assemblers. Let’s keep off the idea of subatomic-nuclear transmutation aka quantum replicators, and stick to what is known based on known physics: Molecular Nano/Atomic replicators and nanofactories. We would be assembling atoms, molecules, and nanoblocks into materials and machines based on computer programs/software blueprints, and, also, once you can scan materials down to the molecular level, you can assemble endless copies of them.
One thing this will mean, no more discontinued products. Anything, from knives and scissors, to sneakers and ultimately sandwiches, will able to be produced on the spot, on demand. Instead of mass-production, it will be mass-customization, of everything.
At first simpler products will be easier to produce, such as materials like polymers and crystal structures such as diamond and quartz; repeatable molecules, steels, rubies, fullerenes, and proteins and amino acids. Then, as time goes on, and more research and development and talent and investment pours into it, more complex, intricate structures will be produced. We won’t have general-purpose replicators overnight, but, it will be pretty soon after the early assemblers, as far as historical time goes.
The next big step will be when we go from assembling and replicating and recycling “dumb” solid matter…to active smart intelligent materials such as nano-fog that can change shape at the touch of a button or control of a computer program. Then it gets really…”weird”. Beyond that, you get into things like femtotechnology and quantum replicators, where you get energy into matter effects, which is beyond the scope of this discussion.