Re: High Technology of the Past

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Dec 28 2000 - 02:53:34 MST


"Emlyn" <emlyn@one.net.au> writes:

> > Of course, a hypothetical future wearable and nanoassembler-equipped
> > hunter-gatherer (wanderer-assembler?) might be able to have all the
> > above without being tied to a single location, but it wouldn't change
> > the fact that he or she would likely be part of such a civilisation
> > network.
>
> What a very cool vision! It's kind of plausible, too, if you buy
> into the nano-santa stuff. After all, this talk about levels of tech
> and work required to support person on a certain area of land is
> really about how much tech & work you need to put it, to cope with a
> given level of resources. The tech and work help you make more of
> less. Given a super duper general assembler kit (probably built into
> your body), you don't really need many raw resources to do very well
> indeed! It's questionable how much work you'd need to do; not heaps,
> I'd think. That fits with the hunter-gatherer
> idea. Original-affluence++, excellent.

It sounds nice, yes. Although I wonder how much economic sense it
makes. Robin had a very good criticism of our "dreams of autonomy" in
a paper with the same name a while back.

The issue is what to do with all those Taj Mahal and French castles
littering the countryside...

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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