It should also be noted that nanofabrication doesn't kill the 'storefront'. Nanofabrication is versatile, but it isn't fast at all. In post-scarcity societies you will still have people who produce things for other people and who basically are making their 'money' on the time they spend. Need a new car? Sure, you could spend days fabbing all the parts and assembling it with your home fabber, wait in line to access a larger community fabber, or you could just go down to that one guy who has set up a large scale fabber that he keeps running 24/7 producing vehicles and grab one of the ones he's already made.

As MrWigggles said, restricting file Access to those physically within a business’s office is a simple security measure. Likewise, even a purely virtual business is going to have dedicated servers and hardware, which will need a physical location. On the more commercial side of things, you'll find both stores with “ready-made” goods as Lazarus suggested, as well as “show-room” style stores where physical examples of goods can be inspected and tried out before a fabrication order is made, with staff providing aesthetic and functional customisation options. Grocery stores and Restaurants exist, the former stocking “real” food for those who can afford it, and the latter providing “Really Cooked” meals in a social environment.

After all, New Valles-Shanghai or any of the other cities didn't spring forth from the ground in 10 AF. There's been a presence on Mars according to the core book from anywhere between 50 and 70 years, and added to that is the pressure of the forced exile of a lot of people from Earth and Near-Earth space with their bodies intact. They've probably had to put up a lot of buildings in a big flaming hurry just to house morphs.

Could it be that VR is so ubiquitous that for a change of pace people will like to go somewhere real to conduct business/pleasure?

For Mars in particular, I dont think there would be very much agro stuff inside cities. There would defiantly be some, but with the mastery of genetics, mars should be the new bread basket of the solar system, with a superior crop of nearly every variety that was on earth, that grow in martian soil, hugging the martial cold, absorbing every photon of martian dim light. Open air crop growing. Now I cant figure out where they would be on mars... one half of me thinks very near the polar regions to make transporting the huge amounts of water cheaper or near the tropics for the heat? Maybe I am being too fanciful with the ealier thread about doing 'little house on the prairie' but on mars.

I suspect that most Martian food would be grown under a controlled environment within the domes. All the genetic engineering which would go into allowing plants to grow on the surface (and potentially mess with the terraforming effort) could be used to expand yield and improve other things. The big kicker is that current indoor farms use 1/100th the water of outdoor systems, and transhuman versions would likely be vastly superior to that. Mars doesn't have a lot of water, so that efficiency would be very useful. I'm not sure how much it would matter, but Mars has a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere and very little nitrogen, which probably has huge effects on plant life, but I don't know enough to figure out exactly what would change.

i picture bio feedstock coming in 5 gallon water cooler jugs :P

This topic has frustrated me for a while, so I'm glad there's some discussion on it Something I was wondering: is it economically feasible on your average space station (say, good sized O'Neils and Toruses) to have all people's basic needs be met by public or private fabbers? In other words, would space habs also have stuff like stores and civil service buildings and space to grow crops? And one other thing: there was a point in the core book that said most new colonies, whether in the solar system or exoplanets, MUST use the new economy to be feasible, ie they rely exclusively on self-sufficiency and gigantic fabricators. Does this not sound right to anyone else?

Noble Pigeon wrote:

Something I was wondering: is it economically feasible on your average space station (say, good sized O'Neill and Toruses) to have all people's basic needs be met by public or private fabbers? In other words, would space habs also have stuff like stores and civil service buildings and space to grow crops?

Yes to the latter. Well, some of it anyway. Fabricators aren't replicators from Star Trek, so you still need the raw materials to have them produce things. Best way to get raw materials for biologicals is just grow it, unless you happen to be near some organics and volatiles rich asteroids. Otherwise you have to import. O'Neill Cylinders are actually really huge, with dedicated green space. And I've heard the original design for a Torus implements an outer-most layer for infrastructure needs. You will never not need raw material gathering and storage - unless you're using TITAN tech which just smashes matter together from raw energy. Civil service and storefronts kind of depends on where you are. There aren't Stores on Locus, though a particular manufacturing collective might run a swap-meet type thing where you can pop in to pick up physical goods they produce as needed and maybe do somebody there a solid. Nor do I think they have much call for a "city hall". Large population centers can't waste space on a physical locale everyone can hang out in - especially with mesh technology. And Locus doesn't have a centralized governance who need a place to call their own. But in Remembrance, which is also the capitol of the LLA, they definitely have major government structures for government people to do government things.

Noble Pigeon wrote:

And one other thing: there was a point in the core book that said most new colonies, whether in the solar system or exoplanets, MUST use the new economy to be feasible, ie they rely exclusively on self-sufficiency and gigantic fabricators. Does this not sound right to anyone else?

While keeping in mind the core book is sometimes contradicted by later materials, this still actually seems fair. There are a couple major points here. First, the New Economy's high level isn't that new. The new parts are the ubiquity of fabrication and the codified reputation system. But reputational and communal groups have existed in history. And there are reputation, social and favor-based elements to modern economic interactions. The second is that when you're building a new colony or settlement, for some part of the initial period, there is no resource output, only resource input. This means you either need to have a lot of personal capital going in, or you need to be able to work for what you need or be able to trade for it (even if you're trading on weight of reputation). Some corp exoplanet operations might actually pay regular wages you can turn in at the company store (as soon as it's built) but otherwise the only stuff you have to trade on is what you bring with you and what you can do on your own, unless you can convince some other people to do it. (And a good n.b. is to remember that unless you're reading mechanics, you are reading a subjective interpretation of reality by a character in universe - not the objective truth. So if a TAU Economics professor is waxing poetic about reputation economics on the frontier, feel free to call him into question.)

The "new habs must use the New Economy" bit is true but misleadingly written. If I'm reading it right, the "new economy" in this case is closer to a survival economy that happens to overlap a lot. For as good as transhumanity has gotten at building colonies in space, it's still a massive undertaking requiring many different disciplines, and regardless of the goal of new or transitional economy, until a certain number of imigrants have arrived to necessitate a value system beyond "we've all got to do our jobs to make this bubble airtight," it just makes most sense that everything is effectively new model and communal. Even hypercorp colony jobs are likely run this way - company town models are no doubt around especially with indentures, but even then early colonies are going to effectively be communes up to a certain point of developent just because that sort of "the tribe shares" system works best for small groups. My thinking on the subject, anyway. I disagree that there'd be no shops on Locus, etc., but with a caveat. "Shop" and "Gallery" would be synonymous, I think, and you'd have little places that might evoke an old fashioned clockmaker's shop, a blend of display space, workspace, and a little living nook in the back. Yes, everything can be nanofabricated at home or in the town square fabber, but it's stated again and again that artisan crafts and nonreproducable products are a huge part of even new economies (arguably moreso there), and a lot of those need space to work in the physical. Though pulling a note from my own very arts and crafts and far-left area, most of that would likely be co-op models, studio space being cycled between various members or up for rent or lottery or some other deciding factor if space is a premium, such as the co-op's front window facing the floatway. Open, multi-use space-for-rent is going to be very common and practical with the increasingly decentralized way of life. I'm having a hard time finding any reason you wouldn't let nature take care of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to organic food. Between drone delivery services if you realize you're low on cabbage and the benefit of community blending one sees at farmers' markets, doubly so for such a public society as most hab-living transhumans would live in, using a maker to print plantmatter seems...inefficient. Yes, it takes time to grow that cabbage, but even today if we want a cabbage, it's not like we need to wait a few weeks for one to sprout. All currently existing habitat designs have significant portions for dedicated agro work, and the side benefits (oxygen cycle, waste disposal through compost, morale/psyche benefits from greenery, and with genesplicing being so common, you better bet the florists are having a field day in EP) are significant enough that hydroponics and even old-fashioned dirt farming is going to be around for a long, long time, even if it is primarily done via bots unless someone wants a day to go old fashioned. I think this came up elsewhere, to someone's delight, but don't forget: we have alpacas in space in EP. According to Panopticon, anyway. Back to Mars, though...most of the above holds true. In any given dome, you're also going to see huge garage and service areas connected in one way or another to terraforming. Transit hubs are another huge part of any dome, complete with gift shops for out-of-towners ("out-domers?"). I don't see tchotchkes going away anytime soon; hell, they're already mass produced to a ridiculous degree or are artisan crafts anyway. Likewise, while many bikes are small enough to fit like a backpack, you're still going to see vehicle garages and temp storage space, likely in the same facilities. Probably something like the facilities in the Netherlands or Japan, writ large. Heavy industrial sites are present, but limited: the big industrial stuff is in orbit unless it can be done on the surface without causing pollution, which there's an incentive to since every calorie of energy pumped into the planet through heat aids the terraforming. As said before, infrastructure's not going anywhere, and there's still the incentive to pump waste heat into the atmosphere, so as an aside there's probably a pretty competitive green industry movement. Or Red industry movement. Clean systems that still aid in terraforming as a side benefit. The books specifically mention souks, which strikes me that marketplaces are huge elements of public space. Again, I don't think one should overplay nanofabrication - traditional shopping is unlikely to go anywhere, though the souks are probably like something of a blend of a middle eastern souk (And a lot of this depends on how extensive FRM is in your version of the setting) with something like a swap meet and community forum in person. And near those are going to be the permanent installations of society, bars, taverns, coffeeshops, restaurants, and clubs, all of which probably need to be a bit bigger than in the modern day because of the aforementioned increasingly public lifestyle. The service industry if anything is going to be even bigger in EP than today, far more diverse and fiercely competitive to stay ahead of the maker catalogues and provide [em]experiences[/em] as much as products. And of course, bigger service installations like that require bigger kitchens, bathrooms, and all those other aspects of life that we don't tend to think too much on in sci-fi but would still be there and probably where we'd have the most appreciated upgrades if we could time travel ahead and enjoy them. And, of course, parks and recreation spots would be everywhere. Partly to combat the psychological problems of living in a dome (admittedly less a problem on Mars than Titan, but still) and partially because if what I'm reading in Sunward is any indication, domes are as competitive as hypercorps about brand recognition and providing memorable experiences. Hell, most of the domes are probably either owned by or effectively run by hypercorps, and with the loss of centralized business offices, the whole municipal area that isn't communally run becomes your new office parks. And we already have some pretty snazzy examples of that on this planet. EDIT: just had a thought. Public nanofab installations...probably look a lot like modern laundromats.

Automats are pretty interesting idea, actually. Like, I dont think a restaurant would exist in EP really... or well... Like I guess they would exist but they would be god damn expensive and a luxury of the hyperelite? Cause they would need to be in this spun torus, I imagine and be very resource intensive.

Restaurants seem to be fairly common in EP, based on MYE and the Transhuman fiction. MYE has the party meeting in a Korean restaurant outside of Pathfinder City, and Interference features a public tea shop. Assuming that the theory that most food is grown rather than nanofabricated is true (and it seems quite well supported) it would make sense if there were still a number of restaurants left.

I wonder how the terroir of Mars affects things. Entirely different soil!

So over the weekend I was in Chicago for the Hawks game and beerfests at various bars (which I failed to buy tickets for in advance, genius intellect that I am...) and had a moment where I looked around the bar (Moe's Tavern on Milwaukee, if you're curious). Very new, very modern bar. And fucking enormous. Easily a few hundred people there, possibly as many as a thousand given that I had no opportunity to venture far inside or up to the second floor. As were most of the other newer bars I went to that day. While there aren't any places as big or as populous as Chicago in Eclipse Phase (and by that I mean "close enough to chicago to come for cheap, diverse beer," so really about half the state and a good chunk of Indiana), it made me think that there absolutely would be enormous clubs, bars, and such in mature EP cities. Alcohol isn't going anywhere, and you know that's an industry that will resist nanoengineered products kicking and screaming, so there will still be huge distilleries and related locations to keep up with demand. And your basic splicer can party harder than most of us ever could hope to, so that's going to shift demand to things like dance floors and harder drinks too. I also noticed there were a lot of bars all over the place. Nice places, dives, sports bars, sports bars lite, pubs, fiercely Irish pubs, etc. There's precious little information on real estate prices on Mars, etc., but it's pretty hard to lose money or rep when your business is alcohol, so I'd be willing to put money down on there being even higher bars per capita in EP.

jKaiser wrote:

While there aren't any places as big or as populous as Chicago in Eclipse Phase (and by that I mean "close enough to chicago to come for cheap, diverse beer," so really about half the state and a good chunk of Indiana), it made me think that there absolutely would be enormous clubs, bars, and such in mature EP cities.

This isn't really true, Valles-New Shanghai is literally twice the size of Illinois and Indiana combined. Noctis-Qianjiao is a little larger than the Chicago metroplex, Elysium is around the same size. The big cities on Titan are in the same ballpark as Elysium. I think that just further supports your point though. Places like bars and other places to socialize have probably proliferated a lot as the need for other big space users such as warehouses is reduced.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

jKaiser wrote:

While there aren't any places as big or as populous as Chicago in Eclipse Phase (and by that I mean "close enough to chicago to come for cheap, diverse beer," so really about half the state and a good chunk of Indiana), it made me think that there absolutely would be enormous clubs, bars, and such in mature EP cities.

This isn't really true, Valles-New Shanghai is literally twice the size of Illinois and Indiana combined. Noctis-Qianjiao is a little larger than the Chicago metroplex, Elysium is around the same size. The big cities on Titan are in the same ballpark as Elysium. I think that just further supports your point though. Places like bars and other places to socialize have probably proliferated a lot as the need for other big space users such as warehouses is reduced.

I stand guilty of not double-checking my population estimates. Though the point is ultimately reinforced. Rather an aside, but I wonder how crazy bartending has gotten with the better part of two centuries of low- and microgravity environments to sling drinks in.

As for the actual mechanics, I envision it much like bars on earth, with glass bottles and all the old trappings. It's just that the glass bottles have a bladder and one-way valve/straw inside. Actually, this got me looking up a lot of fun videos, so here, share the bounty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZx0RIV0wss