This may derail a bit the topic, hope it's not too boring or innapropriate. :)

Snap_Dragon wrote:

I suppose that's true but one could argue if Post-Scarcity is a relative term that we are living in Post-Scarcity world right now (the first world at least) as we've solved the problem of hunger which so baffled our ancestors that we now have an obesity epidemic.

Actually, this actually could be called as true, and with the same degree of reality. The US (for example) has one of the highest differences in income in their population between the very rich and the very poor. And yet, it is called a rich country and most people are believed to have their needs covered. As it stands, it is a term used in both cases in a political meaning, shows what people believe their world to be, doesn't mean it is so. Most people in EP will probably believe they live in a world of no need, but they probably don't meet indentured egos working on digital realms for years just to have a body. It's all about perception.

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Depends on the Economic model, some observations will always be true unless mankind figures out a way to do an end run around physics or negate cause and effect.

True, undoubtedly. Or humanity stops being itself and looking for differences in power everywhere it can.

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As for the statement that the first world depends on the poorness of the third?!? How? The amount of trade between first worlds nations and other first world nations dwarfs that between first world nations and poorer nations. The poverty of one group or nation in no way benefits the others. Those most a poor nation can provide us with is cheap labour and resources. Rich nations push technology forward, provide manufactured products and services. The idea that the first world need other countries to be poor for us to survive is zero-sum game thinking, and seeing as we've seen increases in the the GDP of third world countries as wells as first world countries it become obvious this is not the case. China and India have made great gains in prosperity without somehow driving surrounding third world nations deeper into poverty.

Well, I guess this is not the place to debate economics, but just a couple notes can illustrate my point. There's more than enough literature on the matter if your interested. Third world offers very cheap labor for labor intensive works that multinationals from the first do there, and then export their objects back to the first where the intellectual and advance processes are handled. This way, the Third exports labor intensive goods (cheap) while the first exports technological and information heavy goods (expensive), which's profits depend on the cheap works people in the first wouldn't do for such low prices. The primary exports of most countries in the third are non-manufactured items (food, primary materials, etc), which are very less valuable and expensive than first world materials, thus freeing people in the first to buy those cheap things and devote themselves to more expensive work. Etc. As for China and India, they are BRIC, thus like all developing countries they don't count as Third World. You could say they are Second World, and soon to be First actually, even though technically the Second doesn't exist anymore.

EP is post-scarcity from the viewpoint of a 20th/21st century person. A person can have everything he reasonably needs to live (space, food, entertainment, etc.) without having to do any actual work for it. Food is so available it's basically 'free', unless artificial constraints are put on it. But a person in the third-world could indeed say that about me right now. I could keep myself fed under shelter, and even educate my kids for little or no work at the same level of comfort as a dirt farmer in Elbonia. Of course, if I lived like this, I wouldn't have a car, a house, stacks of books, etc. While food is very nearly post-scarcity (if you accept the right quality), cars and houses are not, and even though I don't strictly consider a car necessary for life, I consider it necessary for my quality of life. The same would be true in EP. You can live in a place where all the world's libraries are available for free, where any facility you need to visit is within walking distance, all your food and housing is free and so on, and you would still decide there is something you need that isn't free. That's human nature. Simply said, post-scarcity isn't a matter of economics. It's a matter of mindset.

it seems to me that the main advantage of nanofabrication is utility. A dedicated factory can produce a synth morph or a nuclear battery or a toaster or a kilo of nitrogylceryn quicker, but it can't switch from one to the other with a new blueprint (unless its a big ol' nanofac). In the wilds of Mars a single cornucopia machine is more useful but less efficent that a dozen dedicated fabricators. It's the balance between utility and economy (of resources and time, mainly). I'm about to start an OU course on nanotechnology which i am looking forward to a great deal. G.

I think a major use of nanotech would be supplying exotic raw materials to more traditional types of fabber. For example, while you wouldn't use a nanofactory to make live cultures for Space Yogurt, you [I]would[/I] use it to synthesize the proteins that a biofabber would use for its bacteria. Or you'd use it to make alloys with the exact composition and structure that the local shipyards need for their latest design. And so on, and so forth.

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Temperature: Constantly breaking and reforming bonds as well as the friction caused by millions of nanobots is likely to produce a large amount of heat. This will cause problems in fabricating certain extremely temperature sensitive materials (such as nitroglycerin which would explode if it experienced even a one degree shift in temperature). Such things would have to be extruded slowly to prevent the machine from creating too much heat, and would require that we cool the system though a radiator of some sort. This means that large stations would likely be limited in their production by the amount of heat they are able to disperse. Also given that as the size of an object increases it's ratio of surface area to internal space decreases larger ships will have a harder time dispersing heat than smaller vehicles and habs.

The largest majority of nanofabrication is likely to occur in enclosed spaces, rather than with nanoclouds operating in the open. This eliminates a number of environmental issues, including temperature. A cornucopia machine can easily use conditioning systems to vent heat and keep the fabrication environment at a specific level, so long as the box isn't open before production is completed. This does create a new issue, however. Volume limitations mean that bigger objects require bigger fabricators. Of course, I'd imagine that the largest majority of tech in this time period is actually made up of a collection of smaller components, individually created through nanomanufacturing processes then assembled by hand on a larger scale, perhaps welded through simpler nanotechnological means.

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Efficiency: Sure machines are versatile but because they work on such a small scale they may run into issues competing with other technologies for market space. Automated factories (although larger) could run a much larger amount of product in the time that it takes for a maker to do the same. It might also consume less energy as it is not building everything on the molecular level. The same could be said of sophisticated 3d printers for simple objects. The strength of the maker is that it would offer a greater degree of freedom and customization in producing objects (likely with a great deal of user generated content for open source blueprints or further modifications on those blueprints). Automated factories might gain the ability to re-tool themselves with nanotech implements as to produce a variety of things, or use stock made by 3d printers to assemble an even more impressive collection of complex items but they could not rival the customization potential of nanotechnology. In this case I think that there would be more than enough room for more low tech styles of manufacture as the maker is a precision instrument not a brute force tool, great if you want a computer with a customized case but not a standard office chair.

Actually, the basic principle behind nanotechnology is that it is surprisingly efficient. This is something you can see today, as our own metabolisms function on the nanoscopic level. The process produces little waste per se, as the majority of what our body discards is completely untouched and unused, or can be reused with relative ease. Metabolic processes also produce very little waste heat, which is why warm-blooded animals are at such great risk of hypothermia, while cold-blooded animals do not have the metabolic function necessary to keep their bodies functioning at all times. We actually require external heat to keep our bodies running safely (homeothermic animals are just more efficient at retaining and regulating temperature), and our bodies have to put forth quite a bit of effort to produce heat in emergency scenarios (this is why we shiver when we are cold).

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Material Limitations: Another problem with nanotechnology is the scale it works on: small, highly complex nanomachines are probably awesome at building things with carbon, but uranium weights about 20 times more and is radioactive. Radiation would likely sterilize the little buggers as they tried to assemble the atomic battery for your synthmorph. Also nanites might not work well in the strong magnetic fields needed to produce permanent magnets, and they might not be able to meet or operate under the conditions necessary to manufacture superconductors.

One common misconception about nanotechnology is the idea that all nanobots have to be of molecular size. The truth is that nanomachines are simply any machine that can manipulate material on the atomic and molecular scale. Many theoretical nanomachines are actually quite large. A great example of one from the book is respirocytes... which are hollow nanomachines that are 18 billion atoms large (according to current designs of what they might be like) and designed as a microscopic pressure tank. They are still nanomachines by the standard definition, but far from small, and a similarly-sized nanomachine designed for manipulating uranium should have more than ample mass for doing so. Nanomachines will likely be designed for specific tasks. Those that are built to work within strong magnetic fields will likely not be built of polarized molecules. Those designed to handle radiation will likely be made of large and dense molecules built to resist, or perhaps even metabolize any radiation they are hit with.

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Non-static objects: The problems in trying to synthesize livings things as already been discussed so I won't go into it again. But imagine trying to extrude a 1950s Caddy with out the oil leaking out while the maker is extruding the engine. Or making sure that no dead nanites or excess building materials are left inside of said engine. Try assembling something fully assembled where internal parts are held in magnetic suspension? Some assembly might be required for complex objects

I agree. The largest devices (ships, habitats, buildings, and even vehicles) likely require large robot assistance to handle macro-assembly of a device, while nanomachines handle finer manipulation, such as welding and production of actual components. The only objects that are likely fully assembled by nanomachines are likely handheld, or would fit in a small case.

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Uncontrolled environment: Nanites would likely have a hard time building something in a hostile environment. Your workforce might be billions of tiny robots strong but in a martian sandstorm they will likely be unable to finish the job (or leave large chunks of partially completed product scattered over a large area).

As I mentioned before, most nanomanufacturing likely occurs in a closed environment, or one with little activity. Cleaner bots likely don't polish your bed while you're screwing in it, and fixers probably don't repair your machines while they are in use. Of course, this is generally also true with macro-assembly. How many construction workers will continue to work on a building during a hurricane?

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Resources Required: Given that a maker does not make something out of nothing maybe certain devices require special feedstocks. Rather than just some unobtainium, a maker might requrie specialized nanites used to make a certain carbon nano-tube structure required by a blueprint.

This is very true for exotic materials. The majority of computers today require gold or other exotic metals for the best conductors, so even though nanomanufacture makes their production rather easy, you'd still need to gather gold for the process, which is a relatively rare metal. More efficient machines might require even more exotic metals... platinum, or some exotically-produced molecule.

Snap_Dragon wrote:

Post-Scarcity Economics: One of the biggest problems I see with nano-technology is the idea of post-scarcity economics. As I see it there is no such thing as post-scarcity as almost all scarcity is caused by shortages of talent and time. Which are both non-manufacturable (maybe unless you count simuspace time dialation and alpha forking?). You also run into the bounds created by physics (limited supplies of matter, the entropy of a closed system always increasing, limited nanotechnicians, your stations ability to disperse the heat from manufacturing). You are essentially dealing with limited resources, and where you have a distribution of limited resources you have what economists could recognize as an economy. And all such economies would have to encourage the maximum efficiency of the use of said resources or risk collapse. In capitalist sociaties this is created by the price system (an increase in the costs of cooling might prompt someone to build larger radiators for the hab or reduce cooling as a result), a reputation or communal system (those producing too much heat viewed as wasteful and marginalized, those that seek to provide a solution are praised and gain increased influence).

Post-scarcity is any scenario in which a good or service can be gotten for free or virtually free. The theory behind post-scarcity in Eclipse Phase is that nanofabrication is so prominent that food can be created with ease and materials are plentiful. Your food maker can literally recycle your shit into edible goods, and convert a broken car into a working one. The proliferation of open-source blueprints has furthered this, by making it so that even the acquisition of construction processes are as simple as looking for the right site on the mesh to get the blueprints. As for whether post-scarcity can exist, it already does to some degree. Books, movies, shows, games and music can be acquired for free or almost free today. In some cases, it is thanks to the open-source movement. In many cases, post-scarcity is caused by the presence of information piracy. For two more common examples, air is a post-scarcity resource, as is dirt. However, post-scarcity is a condition that can be gained or lost, and can exist in some places while being nonexistent in others. For example, seawater is a post-scarcity good for those who live on the coast, but not so for those living further inland. The digital revolution does not create an information post-scarcity for those who do not have internet access. Air isn't a post-scarcity good if you live on the International Space Station. Fertile dirt isn't a post-scarcity good in the desert. Reputation systems generally work best the closer you get to a post-scarcity environment, because currency economies tend to break down as goods get easier to acquire (see digital piracy for a great example of this). This is how the outer-system inhabitants live, where they have ample access to minerals and goods from local asteroids, and need little labor to acquire them thanks to automation. This lack of need for labor or trade is what creates the post-scarcity scenario present throughout much of the setting.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

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In the wilds of Mars a single cornucopia machine is more useful but less efficent that a dozen dedicated fabricators

Except that Inner System bans cornucopia machines from hands of the citizens. If you read closely the IS has a lot of limitations and isn't that posthuman as it would seem in certain aspects-of course with some exceptions.

Actually, the Jovian Republic is the only state that completely bans cornucopia machines. The Planetary Consortium and other transitional economies allow citizens to have cornucopia machines that are limited so that they cannot create restricted items such as many weapons or advanced nanotechnology. However, they can use a CM to make dinner, clothes, an ecto, or many similar items.

OneTrikPony wrote:

Which begs the question; What is the difference between a fabber and a CM? And how dificult is it to hack a fabber into a full-on CM? And is it too late to change the name to something cooler than cornucopia?

Fabbers can be built to much smaller specifications, likely designed to be only slightly larger than the types of items it can build: an ammunition fabber can be very small, and very easy to sneak into a location (it only has to be big enough to fit the ammunition it is building). A CM, and even just the small desktop versions, come in no sizes smaller than being capable of containing an object 40 liters in volume. Furthermore, Cornucopia Machines are designed to manipulate and handle virtually every single atom in the periodic table, and can create a multitude of nanomachines to fulfill the tasks of any given blueprint. Fabbers, however, only need to handle a specific selection of materials suitable to the objects it can produce. That same fabber designed to produce ammunition, for example, probably won't need the ability to manipulate DNA; makers (which are basically fabbers catered to food) have no need for the ability to produce objects from heavier metals and radioactives. In the case of the Consortium, they probably restrict personal fabrication devices to specific common materials, while preventing people from having machines that could manipulate various dangerous materials. I do agree that I'd like a cooler name than Cornucopia Machine. Of course, Cornucopia might be the name of the first model of general fabricator that ever existed, much like how people often reference all copy machines as "Xerox Machines". In 10 AF, the term they use to reference CMs might vary from locale to locale, like "soda" and "pop". People on Scum barges might refer to them as "Genesis Boxes", and bioconservatives might call it "The Devil's Workshop". I'd call them Eco Breakers... because their mere presence threatens to break any nearby economy. :D