Without MNT, those with wealth and power will lose it when they die.

Without MNT, almost everyone alive today will be dead in less than a century. With it, perhaps these people will live thousands of years with more “wealth” than they could possibly imagine.

Nanotechnology has the potential to greatly increase lifespans and eliminate poverty.

Assemblers powered by free solar energy will use open source plans to create anything we could want or need out of garbage.

Isn’t that goal worth spending whatever it takes to get it as soon as possible?

Nevertheless, those who were born in the early 20th century and are still around, I believe are the generation that has seen the greatest revolution in the way Men live that has ever been seen or ever will be seen in history. In 1900, few had electric lights. You rose and went to bed with the sun, and most energy expenditures were still muscle power. A 10th century man transported to 1890 would not see much a difference in the way most people lived in his time and the way they lived in 1890. Move that same person ahead 100 years, and he would be lost.

Now, I predict that you can take today’s man and move him forward 500 years, and he will still be functional. Yes, there will be dramatic technological changes. But the basics of the way people live their lives will not be foreign to today’s man. We are contemplating nantotech today. 500 years from now, we may see it realized. Todays man in 2500 would be enthralled, but he will NOT be surprised!

The ability to disconnect our sleep cycle from the sun brought on by artificial light, the information age, the ability to have plentiful fresh food year round. . . . These things have fundamentally changed the human way of existence far beyond all the groovy gadgets we’ve got. This sort of change happens very infrequently.

I think that the first assemblers will come from someone’s garage or basement, similar to the way Bill Gates “created” Windows. This person or small group will probably be working at IBM or some similar entity, and move it to their own lab.

…my $0.02 – Bobbo

Sometime can you post about why you don’t think that MNT is likely to lead to uncontrollable arms races or unfriendly AI?

“the graph is confounded by lots of noise such as the enormous crime wave in the early part of the century caused by Prohibition.”

Which clearly the current drug prohibitions create their own enormous crime wave; thus “causing a lot of noise” if future societies end those prohibitions, which some appear to be considering.

Anyhow the amount pessimism seems to hard to measure, and I’d say depends too much on where you get your news.

To suggest, as the author does, that the 1900′s village lifestyle was better than 2010′s city’s lifestyle, is to be gullible and susceptible to eden myths that never existed. As you put the graph reported crime rates, why not also put the expected lifespan? Was it the Doom’nGloom zeitgeist? You betcha!

But you’re still in time to recover from it. I now I did.