Register ASAP: John Gilmore on avoiding nanotech war
from the don't-miss-this-one dept.
Register ASAP to save $100 on the Foresight Gathering, Sept 8-10. Here's a sample: ever-controversial Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder and cypherpunk John Gilmore will speak: "I think I want to talk about how the prospect of nanotech is driving my work on intellectual property reform…If our economy is not to crash immediately after assemblers arrive (resulting in many hungry people rioting or warring), society needs to learn how to structure an economy to support the expensive part while letting the cheap part provide its benefits of broad distribution of the results…If even a third or a half of the economy is running on open source principles before assemblers start assembling more assemblers, we can probably avoid war and worldwide civil unrest." Read More for John's full message. "I think I want to talk about how the prospect of nanotech is driving my work on intellectual property reform:
Computers and pervasive communications have made it very cheap to copy information, though still expensive to create it. Business models which align with these costs provide for low or zero-cost copying and distribution "in the field", while recouping the costs of creation in other ways (besides the traditional one of artificially creating a scarcity of copies by legal restrictions). Still, most of the computer/internet industry doesn't understand these new business models, though open source software's success is teaching them. The entertainment middleman industry is particularly resistant, though the citizenry is teaching them via Napster, etc, what it wants.
Nanotech threatens to apply the same economics to physical goods — very cheap copying after relatively expensive creation. If our economy is not to crash immediately after assemblers arrive (resulting in many hungry people rioting or warring), society needs to learn how to structure an economy to support the expensive part while letting the cheap part provide its benefits of broad distribution. of the results.
Intellectual property law, and expected business practice, is being driven by the entertainment middleman industry in exactly the wrong direction: Artificially restricting computers and citizens so that they will not make the copies that they are very good at making. Following this path will lead the economy to a massive dislocation (much bigger than the record companies' dismay about Napster and MP3 — record companies' sales today are greater than ever). Almost nobody understands this yet.
If even a third or a half of the economy is running on open source principles before assemblers start assembling more assemblers, we can probably avoid war and worldwide civil unrest."
July 27th, 2000 at 9:49 PM
Ummm
The whole idea of Nanotechnology is to abolish ALL Intellectual Property rights and make EVERYTHING completely FREE. Anyone who thinks otherwise does not DESERVE to be in this field. I am fed up with hearing people associating Nanotechnology with capitalism and personal profits; quite frankly, it's pissing me off. Nanotechnology is supposed to FREE us, not ENSLAVE us, but with people continuing to talk about 'money' and 'profits', not only will Nanotech enslave us…it will destroy us completely.
July 27th, 2000 at 10:08 PM
Zippyspeak
Computers and pervasive communications have made it very cheap to copy information, though still expensive to create it. Business models which align with these costs provide for low or zero-cost copying and distribution "in the field", while recouping the costs of creation in other ways (besides the traditional one of artificially creating a scarcity of copies by legal restrictions).
What are these "business models," other than raising money from investors and hoping to get to an IPO? What are these "other ways" besides advertising, and angling to capture future market shares by getting in early, developing name recognition, and controlling patented standards? Everyone is hoping to be the next Microsoft or AOL. Most of them will go bust. In the end, only the few who do gain a chokehold on some piece of the common infrastructure will be able to make serious money.
Still, most of the computer/internet industry doesn't understand these new business models, though open source software's success is teaching them.
What open source software's is teaching most of the computer/internet industry is, if we succeed, you're out of business. More precisely, if open-source succeeds, software giants collapse and are replaced by a network of small houses and service providers. But is that really happening? How much market share has Microsoft lost to Linux? Only the big boys have the clout to set the world standards that most computer users need. Most of the upstarts are too busy trying to beat each other to the next release to slow down a bit and cooperate on standards.
The entertainment middleman industry is particularly resistant, though the citizenry is teaching them via Napster, etc, what it wants.
Hah! If Napster and other P2P systems succeed, the "entertainment middleman industry" is toast, and they know it. But they won't go gently. We're talking about a highly integrated and concentrated media oligopoly. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, movie studios and theatre chains, record labels and major concert venues are all owned by the same corporations. Not only do they control $Billions, they have enormous political influence due to their direct control of the public's eyes and ears.
In the entertainment sector, they make money by hyping a limited number of "artists" and other forms of "content" to saturation level over the "free" advertising media they control, then charging high prices for CDs, tickets, cable programming, etc. P2P threatens this whole system. Artists can rise to prominence because people actually like them, not because lots of money has gone into hype. And the whole promotion game can be short-circuited by "pirate" copying. I'm not betting that this is going to happen, though. Repression is a real possibility.
Nanotech threatens to apply the same economics to physical goods — very cheap copying after relatively expensive creation.
But that is already the case, especially in high-technology sectors such as computers and pharmaceuticals. Fixed costs are high, marginal costs low. This results in a perverse economics, in which high prices keep the benefits of large sunk costs from being distributed to the widest population.
If our economy is not to crash immediately after assemblers arrive (resulting in many hungry people rioting or warring),…
John does not make it clear what form of economic collapse he has in mind… Are the people hungry because they have been automated out of work? That would not be expected to follow "immediately after assemblers arrive," since very few people in the advanced countries are employed in production of goods already. Or does the economy collapse because of outmoded "business models?"
…society needs to learn how to structure an economy to support the expensive part while letting the cheap part provide its benefits of broad distribution. of the results.
What is John talking about here? Some kind of socialism? Only couched in the language of "business models?" I don't see how you get around the issue. The point is, if computers, robots, and nanotechnology are going to outcompete people in the market for goods and services, we're going to have to find a social system for wealth distribution which must replace the market.
Intellectual property law, and expected business practice, is being driven by the entertainment middleman industry in exactly the wrong direction: Artificially restricting computers and citizens so that they will not make the copies that they are very good at making. Following this path will lead the economy to a massive dislocation
Massive dislocation is inevitable, but so are the type of controls John is talking about, at least when we get to nanotechnology. It's one thing to let people copy music tracks, books and software, but quite another to let them copy bombs and plagues. Perhaps it's not such a bad thing if the corporations win by imposing copyright-protecting software systems on the non-hacker majority. Future commercial products may become so complex and inaccessible to the unequipped that hacking gradually goes the way of amateur radio. I'm no fan of corporate domination, but still less a fan of anarchy. If we are to win our freedom, we will have to do it by collective democratic action under an orderly system of laws.
If even a third or a half of the economy is running on open source principles before assemblers start assembling more assemblers, we can probably avoid war and worldwide civil unrest."
Really? What about nanotechnic arms races? And how are these "open source principles" going to fix the maldistribution of wealth, nationally and globally? Maybe open source means somewhat more people sharing in the spoils, but even in an open-source world, there will be masses of the poor and disenfranchised.
What really bothers me, though, is this notion that the nanotechnic future can be anything like an open-source, hacker's world, with people freely exchanging assembler software and plugging it into their personal molecular manufacturing systems. Such a scenario is not merely dangerous; it is guaranteed to be disastrous. The reasons for this are well-known, and the problem is how to get from where we are to a world in which access to technology is tightly controlled, yet the benefits are distributed fairly to all. In this context, John's comments here are pointing in exactly the wrong direction.
July 28th, 2000 at 12:43 AM
Re:Zippyspeak
If, after nanotech, "access to technology is tightly controlled", the human race will never leave this planet. We'll be finished. Once such a dictatorship arises, it will never, ever fall.
July 28th, 2000 at 2:12 AM
open source != linux;
How much market share has Microsoft lost to Linux?
Better to ask how much market share does Apache have?
The advantages of the open source models of software development are clear. The combination of Open Source and Object Orientation provides an enprecedented platform for accelerated development. My own company (with a technical team of 4.6 people) has almost finished building a very complex ensemble of software, built using, and on top of a number of open source software products which have been proven to work well together. We stared work on it in April, and will be at 'V1' by the end of August. I know teams of 70 who have been working for up to 4 years on almost exactly the same concept but implimented using various proprietory solutions. They have been stymied every time their technology base got 'upgraded' or in one case, just vanished because the developer of that component went under.
I have faith that not only is enbracing open source the road to much faster and more efficient software development, but it is also the road to long term support and maintinence. Open source projects are here to stay, and as long as they remain useful they will be supported. They develop lives of their own.
So what has this to do with Nanotech? I think that should be obvious. Imagine an open source version of Lego bricks. Imagine the things kids would build if they could fabricate bricks to their own design in their own play pen.
It is software which will determine what Assemblers assemble. The atoms themselves are just physical instances of that software. The software doesn't need to be contained in the assembler, or executed on the assembler. it could offload that work to larger structures, so there is no limit to the complexity of that software.
At the very least we should be trying to develop open source models of basic foodstuffs, shelter and construction materials, smart cables and so forth. This will go a long way to redressing the social disruption that some people fear.
It is worth speculating on societies without capital constraints, on human dynamics in the age of whimsical transmogrification. Perhaps we should all go read Michael Moorcock's "The dancers at the end of time" again.
July 28th, 2000 at 4:35 AM
business models for open source
Business models for open source are laid out in Eric Raymond's essay, The Magic Cauldron . There is also an introduction to the business case for open source on the Open Source website. The main idea is to sell something else that complements the free good. Raymond suggests a variety of indirect-s ale value models for selling:
1. services (installation, customization) ala Red Hat, etc.: "give away the recipe, open a restaurant"
2. hardware, ala Silicon Graphics (and IBM now seriously supports Linux) "widget frosting"
3. accessories, books, conferences or whatever enhances the product, ala O'Reilly
Open source software can also help build repution and market share for a later commercial product ("loss leader"). It might also be possible to sell the product first with a commitment to open source later, or license brand name certification, or sell content accessed via an open source program.
There are also what might be call "non-business" models, for those who don't need need the profits, but are motivated by reputation, crafting cool tools, or some other personal fulfillment.
Open source expands the range of business models available, and will be very relevant to a world where matter is like software, with design information the crucial resource. If open source means no one is extracting monopoly rents on intellectual property, and nanofabricators can cheaply eliminate material poverty, then why do you assume there must be "masses of poor and disenfranchised"?
It will be possible to have safety and open source sharing. As I noted in an earlier post (NanoJava for Safety), Eliezer Yudkowsky has suggested a Java-type "sandbox" that allows people to make and share designs, while restricted from doing dangerous things. Levels, modules, APIs, monitoring, and other aspects of software architecture can be designed to enable both liberty and safety. Centralized control and secrecy were the downfall of the nuclear industry (breaking the promise of "power too cheap to meter"). Making nanotech successful will require learning to work in the open.
More philosophically, (and one reason why it's worth listening to the vehement challenges of our anarchist colleagues), the next economy will be fundamentally different, just as contemporary capitalism differs dramatically from the networks of command and mutual obligation that wove together feudalism. And, just as merchant fairs represented the embryo of a new capitalist economy, so open source may suggest some ways to operate an economy of abundance.
July 28th, 2000 at 5:49 AM
democracy
There exist non-binary values. Anarchy is not the only alternative to dictatorship. The hope of humanity is an ideal we call "democracy."
July 28th, 2000 at 6:11 AM
Apache != the $B market
I knew I was asking for it… Believe me, guys, I love open-source. But listen, I've been using computers since the 1970s, and I'm something of a techie (physicist), but I don't have the time to figure out all the bugs in my Redhat distribution.
Apache is not a consumer product. People who make a living designing or maintaining computer systems have the time to collect and absorb the knowledge they need to cope with the chaos of the open-source software world. That's great. But everyone else, people who only want to use computers to do other kinds of work, need simplicity, clarity, reliability, and stable standards. I don't see the open-source world meeting those needs at the moment, nor do I see how they are going to, in a constantly-evolving and highly competitive market, unless some big actor steps in to establish standards.
Unfortunately, the big corporate actors are often even more unwilling to cooperate, since they figure they can impose their proprietary standards on everyone else. What I think would really be nice would be if the government, perhaps through NIST, would catalyze the process by announcing that standards will be set and convening working groups from the industry to hammer them out. Of course, everyone would howl about "know-nothing bureaucrats… picking winners and losers." Oh well, just a thought.
July 28th, 2000 at 6:23 AM
Re:business models for open source
1. services, 2. accessories. This means you can make a living. You don't become the next Bill G. That's exactly my point. If open-source succeeds, it means the end of the age of the dinosaurs.
3. hardware. If you gain a chokehold on an essential part of the infrastructure, you can make big money. "Widget frosting" sounds like quite a come-down for the old IBM, though.
I'll have to look at your NanoJava post. I'm not sure what you mean by "centralized control and secrecy were the downfall of the nuclear industry," though. Probably it should have been more centralized, with fewer reactor designs more thoroughly trolled-out. The idea of a proliferating nuclear cottage industry sounds a bit loony, even though I tend to think nuclear power could be used safely enough.
July 28th, 2000 at 6:24 AM
Grey goo?
Economic war is the very last thing on my mind at this point.
I'm more concerned about grey goo, assemblers that just happen to take solar energy, ambient carbon dioxide, ambient nitrogen, ambient water, and start churning out HCN like there is no tomorrow. Or how about nanites that, upon detecting that you have more than X number of genes for melanin production, kill the cell. Or, if you have less than X number.
If nanoware is free, then any restriction you place on it can be trimmed off. That's the danger in open-sourcing it. Then, whammo, all it takes is one technically competent nut to start any one or more of the scenarios above.
July 28th, 2000 at 7:59 AM
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July 28th, 2000 at 10:25 AM
Re:Grey goo?
Um, are you under the impression that a person who'd deliberately release grey goo would be deterred by a copyright?
You have to physically keep the capability out of the hands of Bad Guys, at least until defenses are in place. This is largely (although not entirely) unrelated to intellectual property issues.
July 28th, 2000 at 10:27 AM
cute but unrealistic
I appreciate your humor, but I think it is unrealistic to project a nanotech economy that looks like a network of small businesses on the open-source software model.
* It's too dangerous.
* It doesn't address the macroeconomic picture: what are the rest of the people supposed to be doing?
A future based on a radically different technology is going to look radically different from anything that exists today.
July 28th, 2000 at 2:28 PM
Sponsor a Student: "reply to this" to apply
Students: please "Reply to this" to list your personal URL and up to 50 words on why you'd benefit from (and add to) this Gathering. See the event website for details on how this works. (Note: this is an experiment for us; please be patient.)
–Christine Peterson, prez, Foresight
July 28th, 2000 at 4:06 PM
Re:cute but unrealistic
So let's explore this a bit. I agree the future will be radically different, but we can still draw on our present institutions as a basis for thinking about what might be possible and desirable.
1. First, the business models described match ways real companies, large and small, currently generate revenue. So, be specific if you are saying they are not feasible.
2. "it's too dangerous"
Maybe the home nanofab can't really assemble atoms and molecules, but somehow just molds things out of Nanobloks, Nanofybers or Nanopasta, all of which were made in safe, secure nanoforges. Colors, flavorings and other special components could also be made and distributed the old fashioned way. That lets you do whatever necessary to make the real assemblers as secure as possible, while still having a thriving community of businesses and individuals providing open source and proprietary designs to be built by the home nanofabs. If that's not safe enough, then what sort of precautions do you suggest would be needed for commercial nanoproducts?
3. "What are the rest of the people supposed to be doing?"
What are the >97% of the population who are not farmers doing? What are the >80% of the population who are not manufacturing doing? Maybe people won't work any harder than the few hours a week our hunter-gatherer ancestors did. These issues apply whether or not nanotech is open sourced or monopolized by big companies. Smarter computers/robots are a bigger threat to current service jobs than are material products from nanotech. We shouldn't let the bogey of unemployment or "lump of labor" fallacies" scare us away from developing technology. I agree that it's important to think about how people will occupy themselves, but my guess is that most of them will find something more interesting than sitting around watching trideo all day. What matters for creating an open source community of nanodesigners is that enough people will enjoy designing clothes, meals, appliances, furniture and other things to be produced by nanofabs, either as a hobby or a business.
July 28th, 2000 at 10:37 PM
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July 29th, 2000 at 1:52 PM
Standards
Umm, there are standards. For example, most command line programs work the same way, with certain command line options always meaning the same thing. For example, most command line programs that take a file as input can be started just by typing 'program filename'. The ones that can't are for developers and need extra options to even get started because they don't make assumptions (hackers don't like that).
On the GUI front, things are starting to fall together. Remember that it's only within the last couple of years that there has even been development on the consumer level desktop manager. Consider the speed with which GNOME, KDE, Enlightenment, et al. have been developing, they are going to surpass Windows in quality very soon (just think about how many Windows apps feature custom-built interfaces using custom widgits) and then Mac OS.
When dealing with open source software, just remember that it's trying to catch up on 15+ years of work in just a few (I'd say that about 2 years ago the push to make user friendly open source software started).
July 30th, 2000 at 10:58 AM
Gubrud != half a brain
bugs in Linux… read the source code and FIX them! You certainly can't do that with closed standards Windows crap. A bug stays with Linux for days, a few weeks at most. And its code base has been under scrutiny for years. Anyone who could blather about 'bugs' in this context mistakes 'bugs' for operator incompetence.
Get a Mac.
July 30th, 2000 at 2:23 PM
Bruns is intelligent and worth responding to
1a. How many of these companies actually make a profit?
1b. I don't say it is unfeasible to make money in the ways you suggest, but the trend of the past 20 years has been in the opposite direction, towards high concentration, with standardization and price tag preferred over quality and service, culminating in the Microsoft monopoly. If the open-source movement succeeds big, the monster dies. I don't see how the monster can learn a new business model that cuts its profitability. But it is not at all clear that open-source software can succeed in capturing the mass market, unless its competitors can agree to common standards.
2. My assumption has been that it would be necessary to keep replicators and primary nanoassemblers under tight control. I don't see the need for "home nanofabs;" after all, people like shopping and bringing home the goodies in boxes. I agree that the model you suggest could be safe enough, but it still isn't clear to me that there is any advantage in having final assembly done at home, particularly if you are no longer talking about "local production from local resources." What does perhaps make some sense is a model which resembles the electronics-assembly industry, where primary components are manufactured mainly by a few large corporations, then released to a much larger number of secondary OEMs. Perhaps it would be worthwhile developing a set of guidelines for this model. We would have to ensure that the components released to the wider market could not be assembled either into dangerous products or into instruments which could be used to bootstrap an illicit assembler capability. One danger is that partial disassembly of such blocks might yield elements which would be useful in gaining an illicit capability.
3. I have never suggested that we should not develop the technology, although I do take issue with those who assert that technology is destiny and there is no need to ask whether it is good for people. You are right that computers and robots will have a larger impact on the labor market than molecular manufacturing per se, but I don't see how you can isolate one from the other when you talk about social models for the future. The essential point is that the labor market, which is crucial to the success of capitalism as a social system, is going to fail in the coming decades. I agree that people can find things to do, that life without compelled labor can be rich and meaningful. But how is this supposed to work under the market system?
This is why I accused John Gilmore of "zippyspeak." He alludes to the massive economic dislocations that will be caused by future technology, and the danger of resulting social chaos, but suggests that the solution will be finding appropriate "business models." This is just silly. No more than a tiny fraction of the world's population is going to be able to work in high-technology, be it open source or not. If dystopian scenarios are to be avoided, there will have to be a social restructuring. Nanotech and the technologies that are inextricably entwined with it imply a future beyond business, beyond the mania for moneymaking that has defined the culture of the last two decades. But of course, nearly everyone who is enthusiastic about the possibilities of this technology is deeply committed to this culture, which is why Gilmore speaks as he does.
July 30th, 2000 at 2:38 PM
re: standards
I hope you're right, i.e. that the incentives toward standardization in the open-source industry will outweigh those toward insularity. I have GNOME and KDE on my computer, and they don't seem to work together; you are forced to choose one or the other if you want a seamlessly integrated system, and then you find a lot that is missing or bug-ridden. If these guys would agree to work together, what doesn't work so well in one system could be made up by something from the other. But they seem to be more interested in competing.
July 30th, 2000 at 6:51 PM
Re:Sponsor a Student: "reply to this" to apply
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July 31st, 2000 at 12:16 AM
1. IP in hardware
Lots of companies make plenty of profits with the kind of business models that Eric Raymond suggests in the The Magic Cauldron, and that I described in my more serious post, and the two on "Why buy a ZNaNoFab? though of course we don't know which ones may work best. And I'd agree, open source software needs friendly interfaces and easy installation if it wants to reach mass markets as a consumer good, rather than just working backstage. Donald Norman's book The Invisible Computer has some good discussion of market changes pushing for better quality, service and ease of use. It would make quite a difference if open source could ride that wave, establishing alternatives to Microsoft's IP monopolies. In addition to worrying about trends like those arising from natural monopoly characteristics in software, it's worth thinking about how trends can be surfed to advantage.
One premise worth making explicit is that even if intellectual property can't be protected by laws and courts, it might be done in hardware, as Lawrence Lessig suggests in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. So media products, goods, franchises, etc. would be able to maintain a unique identity and control reproduction through some combination of encryption and authentication. How that plays out in detail depends on the balance between encryption and decryption (and on the kinds of government regulation and open source efforts that Lessig talks about), but, for example, quantum computer decoding might be outmatched by quantum entangled encryption or something. The likelihood of IP continuing, whether enforced by legal code or hardware code, makes it worth considering scenarios where intellectual property persists in some forms, and so plenty of current business models would apply.
Open source and proprietary IP may well coexist in nanotech. Who knows, and especially where safety is an issue, hardware IP might be used to implement an open source license: "You can use it for free, as long as you use as a Debian(TM) Dongle."
[By the way, my efforts to think and write on these topics are part of the project on open institutions that I've listed on the Senior Associate website, and I hope may also be of some use for the Engines of Creation 2000 Initiative. Comments and criticisms are appreciated as a way to help make the ideas better.]
July 31st, 2000 at 12:27 AM
2. Nanoblocks and architecture for dumb nanotech
I'm glad you found my comments worth replying to. In hopes there may be further discussion of these issues, I've split my responses into three threads: 1. IP in Hardware, 2. Nanoblocks, and 3. What will everyone do?
I agree that defenses against malicious hacking are an important part of the agenda for nanotech safety, and this would need to be considered in the design for components such as NaNobloks or NaNoFybers. Thinking about architecture and design tools is useful, including architecture for all the levels above the "assembly language" layer. The layers in internet transport offer a useful analogy, though with safety designed in, unlike the insecurity of current internet architecture.
Components don't all have to be open source either. Lessig emphasizes the importance of modules, and admits (only slightly grudgingly) that modules with open APIs and proprietary insides would be feasible, and compatible in an environment along with open source. That's one reason why safe Lego/Java-type NaNoBloks seem like a promising idea. Smart utility fog is fun to think about, but for some things dumb nanotech might be both more feasible and safer.
And, yes, economies of scale, scope, etc. and the fun of shopping may still mean that most people shop at (or have their goods delivered after ordering online from) ZNaNoMart or its competitors.
[By the way, my efforts to think and write on these topics are part of the project on open institutions that I've listed on the Senior Associate website, and I hope may also be of some use for the Engines of Creation 2000 Initiative. Comments and criticisms are appreciated as a way to help make the ideas better.]
July 31st, 2000 at 1:41 AM
3. What will everyone do?
What will everyone do once nanotech is available, and how to manage the transition, which is what Gilmore seems most worried about. The big questions. I'll point out a few ideas, which we might follow up in further discussion:
a. "Time Enough for Love." Cultivating friendships, raising children, and enjoying other personal relationships could soak up a lot of time. (The title is from one of Robert Heinlein's best novels, exploring the implications of long life. Damien Broderick also cites it in his interesting book: The Last Mortal Generation.)
b. Leisure. TV, travel, sports, etc., all growing rapidly in wealthy economies. And when a twenty hour workweek and three months paid vacation a year get boring then:
c. Hobbies. All the things people already do without being paid. That covers both conventional hobbies like model railroading, stamp collecting, birding, boating, etc., and civic activities like volunteering as a museum guide or working for a cause. Many military retirees go into real estate and other business, not because they have to have the income, but as an interesting way to occupy themselves. And the lines blur in the current ethos of finding work doing what you enjoy as play. And, as in theatre or internet startups, people may spend inordinate amounts of time on things they really enjoy, even if they realize they won't ever get superstar incomes themselves. The market may play a smaller role, continuing the trend in which the non-profit sector is growing increasingly prominent in wealthy economies. An economy of hobbyist projects is one answer to the question Gilmore poses about how to create expensive productions, which can then be distributed cheaply.
d. Creativity and human services. Unless or until we have really good artificial intelligence and human-equivalent robots,there will still be demand for services that only humans can provide. The labor market would reorient around the ways in which those were scarce, taking the abundant stuff for granted.
Transitions. The Social Security system in the US drastically reduced poverty among the elderly, in ways which maintained dignity and self-respect. Something similar might end up being done to deal with the current scandalous levels of child poverty. (Hans Moravec uses the retirement analogy in his book Robot, saying we should let our metallic descendants support us in leisure.) The revamped US welfare system illustrates a shift to benefits like the Earned Income Credit, tied to working. Food for work schemes play a key role in creating social safety nets in poor countries. Linking responsibilities to entitlements is a useful tool for sharing abundance. Maybe we'll need to come up with more such arrangements, rather than just assuming that everything will be given away for free.
Most authors don't profit much from the sale of their writings, but pursue recognition, which also yields other benefits. Public libraries have been offering free access to knowledge for a long time now. We'd still have plenty of music even if we relied only on those who earn their living playing for live audiences. Many tenured academics are motivated by scientific or scholarly pursuits, and function in a grant-seeking economy funded by governments and foundations. Many producers of commodity products, in the computer industry and elsewhere, already do very well in businesses where there there are no crucial secrets or intellectual property constraints on the product. So even in the event that the current industries dependent on intellectual property somehow fail to maintain IP in either legal code or hardware code, they'd just be replaced by businesses and non-commercial enterprises that do know how to operate under open source rules.
The transition to an info/bio/nanotech economy may not be easy, but there are lots of examples and experience which can be drawn on to design the institutional innovations needed to cope with advancing technologies. And, just as markets partially supplanted but didn't completely replace the hierarchical institutions of feudal societies, so the pursuit of moneymaking may persist in a nanotech society, even if, perhaps, most people spend their time playing in gift cultures.
[By the way, my efforts to think and write on these topics are part of the project on open institutions that I've listed on the Senior Associate website, and I hope may also be of some use for the Engines of Creation 2000 Initiative. Comments and criticisms are appreciated as a way to help make the ideas better.]
July 31st, 2000 at 6:28 AM
Re:Grey goo?
Heh, no, not a copyright.
Open Source means having the code, which means you can compile it into something new and destructive.
Presumably, closed source nanotech would not have the code available, you'd get the equivalent of binaries, which are that much harder to tamper with.
That is, it's easier to redo Linux (as you have the code) than, say, WinNT (where you only have executables). What we want is people not having access to the code for nanotech until we can get around the grey goo scenario, if that is even possible.
July 31st, 2000 at 6:31 PM
Re:Grey goo?
Actually, with the source code, it would be possible to write an anti grey goo that would stop and destroy the grey goo. If the code is proprietary, then it's going to take a few hackers willing to break EULAs to reverse engineer the grey goo program (or, more likely, caused grey goo as a bug) and find it's opposite.
I should note that my initial thoughts come from the spam and anti spam on Usenet. I realize that anti grey goo won't work this way exactly (sending out one anti spam message to stop on spam message), but the priniciple should still hold.
July 31st, 2000 at 6:51 PM
Re:1. IP in hardware
In addition to worrying about trends like those arising from natural monopoly characteristics in software, it's worth thinking about how trends can be surfed to advantage.
Yes, agreed. But note: The surfer is a solitary figure, riding his wave, just a few other surfers out on a crisp morning. There's a huge clot of bathers who will turn up a few hours later, who don't surf. They ain't going to learn, either. Now, you can take the attitude that the bathers don't matter, they're boring peasant stock, or you can take the attitude that the surfers don't matter, they're just a few egotists (who'll grow old, and become dads and moms, or worse)… You look puzzled…
even if intellectual property can't be protected by laws and courts, it might be done in hardware…. So media products, goods, franchises, etc. would be able to maintain a unique identity and control reproduction through some combination of encryption and authentication.
Yes, this is a possibility, as I already alluded to in our discussion. In the present environment, it would require collusion between electronics manufacturers and publishers, not so farfetched in light of the position of Sony, AOL-Time/Warner, etc., but still far from realization across the full range of media platforms, including computers which will still run any binary you feed them. In the future, especially if the G-7 governments make good on their recent pledge to defend IP, we could have copyright protection hardware/software imposed by law. It would not be airtight, but it would protect the system of corporate control and profitability of commercialized "culture."
quantum computer decoding might be outmatched by quantum entangled encryption or something.
This is almost certainly a red herring. Don't hold your breath waiting for quantum computing to become a practical reality or quantum crypto to be worth the trouble. Ordinary encryption is good enough, but no encryption is safe against copying of the decrypted output.
July 31st, 2000 at 7:34 PM
Re:2. Nanoblocks and architecture for dumb nanotec
I'll have to admit here that this is something I hadn't previously considered.
This Lego blocks scenario does suggest a middle way between the alternative extremes of uncontrolled universal assemblers in the hands of 13-year-old hackers, or else a world where all manufactured goods appear in finished form from behind the super-security walls of The Corporation.
I agree this is a sensible approach that should be encouraged; there is, of course, a need to define acceptable safeguards and specifications for releaseable blocks.
But note that products made this way probably can't achieve the full range and performance levels possible with unconstrained nanotech. In particular, as you noted, it probably cannot work for bionanotech, including food production.
More importantly, I still don't see that we have solved the macroeconomic problem. For those who insist there must always be free enterprise and small business opportunities, this notion of a secondary product-assembly industry fed by primary nanoproduction makes a convenient pacifier. But I think in the long run, it is irrelevant.
July 31st, 2000 at 8:45 PM
Re:3. What will everyone do?
I don't disagree with any of your points about the things people can do when they're not slaved to a workweek. The point of my question was, what will they do for money? We're so desperate here to define "business models" for the future, but if we still need to be competing for market shares, how do we ever get to that "20 hour work week with 3 months paid vacation"? Last I heard, the Germans were being lectured by the US, and pressured by the international market, to cut back on their "bloated" labor standards. You talk about linking entitlements to responsibilities. Fine, but who is going to force responsibilities on the children of the rich? And what would you do if, in spite of open-source's wild success in the computer and nanotech apps market, what happens is still massive displacement, disenfranchisement, desperation, social and international conflict?
The really deep changes that must come will sweep away all concerns about how our commodities are made, by whom, and how they are paid for. The question is how we will relate to one another and organize ourselves to share in the abundance that technology makes possible. You list a number of good ideas about how to approach this question, but the underlying assumption is still: Capitalism Forever!
Computers that can think a million times faster than humans, robots that can perform any manipulation from manufacturing to massage, all goods and services provided by technology…. The clear implication is that capitalism, as a way of life, is doomed; what remains is the danger is that capitalism might triumph over life itself.
Anyone who proposes to "confront the singularity" by encouraging appropriate "business models" just doesn't get it.
August 1st, 2000 at 1:39 AM
Re:3. What will everyone do?
Nanotecnology will makes goods (almost) free to produce. This makes old concepts of earning money to buy goods obsolete. There will be no rich or poor as money loses its value.
With Open Source those who want to make goods do it for free. Those who just want to use goods just get them for free. Everybody does what they want and all are happy
August 1st, 2000 at 5:38 AM
Re:Grey goo?
Well, then you're stuck with the question…
Which will work more efficiently, the grey goo, or the anti grey goo? And, also, how long does it take to examine the grey goo and work out an "antidote"? If that period of time is longer than, say, what it takes to consume a significant fraction of the Earth…
Or how about a really malicious grey goo? Let it float around in the Earth's mantle … plenty of heat and material, replicate, and then, on a certain date, let it trigger and eat the crust. Don't know about that problem until it is too late. *slurp*
August 1st, 2000 at 7:48 AM
Re:Ummm
Nanotechnology will reduce the cost of living. Each human has only so much time to pay for the cost of living and to enjoy the fruits of his labor. (If you work 85 hours a week to own a Hatteras when are you going to enjoy it.) With nanotechnology, the cost of necessities will be negligible–just the effort to claim them. The cost of luxury items will still have a profit inherent in their cost. Live entertainment will have a substantial cost, but not rebroadcasts. scene
August 1st, 2000 at 9:28 AM
Re:3. What will everyone do?
You seem to be making the implicit assumption that doing things is necessary to make money. The rich have always known that this is not so, you can let your money work for you. What is unusal about these times is that for the first time in history a massive number of people meet this standard. When last I heard there were 7 million millionaires in the US alone. The good thing about MNT is that it make it possible to extend this trend throughout the population, such is the productive power intrinsic to MNT.
I suspect that the US was talking about the German government making rules about the terms between employers and employees, that is a different animal altogether. Make the whole of society wealthy and the need for such government intervention disappears altogether.
August 1st, 2000 at 10:06 AM
Re:3. What will everyone do?
Previous post was accidentally submitted while still being edited…
You only get this disruption if you make everyone poor, as I indicated, MNT is productive enough so that everyone can (in effect) be made rich.
Only in the sense that Capitalism is the minimization, if not the absence, of coercive third party (government) interference in the exchange of goods and services between individuals groups and organizations.
What *I* don't get is what you mean by "capitalism might triumph over life itself". Since capitalists are all (presumably) alive, I submit that this is meaningless. The point is that with the development of the exemplar manufacturing architecture (from chapter 14 of Nanosystems), or some variant thereof, Capitalism can achieve the old Communist dream of putting the means of production into the hands of the people. The difference is that in this case you have such high tech that instead of having a communally run factory, each individual has their own factory. To consider what an economy will look like, should this come to pass, seems quite appropriate to me. Greg
August 1st, 2000 at 11:38 AM
promises, promises
Karl Marx promised that the state would wither away, but the Communist states became the world's most rigid and oppressive, until they collapsed.
Now we have prophets of utopian capitalism promising that the market will wither away.
August 1st, 2000 at 5:23 PM
Re:Grey goo?
Well, there are always outside chances. Whether there is some kind of regulation or not on nanotech, the chanches of grey goo are about the same. Most people aren't stupid, esp. if they have a home nanofab. This is just like people who run Unix on their home computers. They know that with one command or a small bug in a program, all of their files could be unlinked or over written, but the chances of this happening are small. The same holds for grey goo.
On the time issue, remember that nanobots can't replicate that quickly. They have to get the materials, build the new ones, and activate them before those can start the cycle over again. Grey goo nanobots would be like bacteria: replicating exponentially but dieing off (i.e. getting destroyed) so frequently and replicating so slowly (though much faster than most bacteria) that taking over the world would not go un noticed. By the time we have grey goo capable of what you are writing about, we'll be able to upload and get off the planet (of course, barring the very far outside chance that we create grey goo that can replicate in outer space using bits of dust, etc..
August 1st, 2000 at 5:55 PM
Re:3. (response to Greg)
You seem to be making the implicit assumption that doing things is necessary to make money.
I do not make such a silly assumption. Most of the rich obviously do very little, compared with the amount of money they make. But most people are not rich; yes, I know, lots of people own some stocks these days, but nearly all of us are workers! We make our living from the economic value of a very particular form of capital: human brains and muscles. But we know that technology will just about erase the value of this form of capital — the only form which is close to being equally distributed.
When last I heard there were 7 million millionaires in the US alone. The good thing about MNT is that it make it possible to extend this trend throughout the population, such is the productive power intrinsic to MNT.
7 million millionaires? That's just great. What about the rest of us? Productivity is not a panacea; the issue is the distribution of wealth. Your assumption that increased productivity will make everyone rich fails to explain the persistence of poverty in the world today, including right here in the USA, in the midst of such mind-boggling abundance.
I suspect that the US was talking about the German government making rules about the terms between employers and employees, that is a different animal altogether. Make the whole of society wealthy and the need for such government intervention disappears altogether.
How will we know when the society as a whole is wealthy enough for working people to be able to enjoy some spare time? In Germany, they figured they were wealthy enough, but in today's lawless world market the freedoms won by German workers are threatened by competition from low-wage, low-benefit countries where labor has never held political power. As to "government intervention," you're absolutely right. The reason we have such relatively miserable labor standards in the US is the relative lack of strong legal protection for the interests of working people. Bryan talked about a 20-hour work week and 3 months vacation. Technology is not going to give that to us. It will have to be won through political struggle and the institutions of democracy.
MNT is productive enough so that everyone can (in effect) be made rich.
Present-day technology is productive enough. Poverty does not exist because of scarcity, but because of inequality.
Capitalism is the minimization, if not the absence, of coercive third party (government) interference in the exchange of goods and services between individuals groups and organizations.
Blinkered ideological rhetoric. Capitalism is a social order, an economic system, an ideology, a political order, a way of life. It does not exist without coercion; it is a system that has usually, if not always, been imposed violently and maintained by force. The essence of this system is to replace community with commodities, to plunder, pollute and privatize the commons, to make communal life impossible and replace it with an alienated mass of isolated individuals. Under capitalism, we are consumers, laborers, capitalists, feeling ourselves to be in competition with one another, believing ourselves autonomous, even as we take part in the most complicated and interdependent economy that has ever existed. Only behind the secured walls of the nuclear family does some vestige of real human community survive. Many of us do not even have that. Yes, this is a caricature, but it describes the essence of capitalism, as distinguished from all other forms of human society.
What *I* don't get is what you mean by "capitalism might triumph over life itself". Since capitalists are all (presumably) alive, I submit that this is meaningless.
Capitalism can very well survive without people. Hans Moravec describes such a possibility with considerable enthusiasm in Robot. Corporations are supra-human machines with their own agenda, namely, to make money. They don't necessarily need people in order to do this. Okay, so the shareholders are presumably people, but they are not necessarily all or even most of the people. Moravec even goes so far as to speculate that robocapitalists might outcompete their progenitors.
Capitalism can achieve the old Communist dream of putting the means of production into the hands of the people. The difference is that in this case you have such high tech that instead of having a communally run factory, each individual has their own factory.
That is certainly a very capitalist dream.
To consider what an economy will look like, should this come to pass, seems quite appropriate to me.
I do not think it is appropriate to consider the economics of the late 21st century without a willingness to ask fundamental questions about the ideology of the late 20th century.
August 2nd, 2000 at 6:44 AM
Re:Grey goo?
I'm not talking about stupid people hitting something on an "outside chance," I'm talking about malicious, insane people.
Consider the number of terrorists who have no problem going up with their bombs; kamikaze pilots smashing their planes into a target, or some crazed fundamentalist geek who decides to bring about the Apocalypse firsthand to fulfill "God's prophecy." Jim Jones, anyone? This happens quite frequently. It's not uncommon for a parent, when committing suicide, to take out a spouse and then the kids, too. It's not just about destroying yourself, it is about taking everyone else with you.
You simply cannot count on all human beings to be perfectly rational, sane, and motivated by survival instincts and self-interest. History has shown this. The people who make the grey goo would do it purposefully. All it takes is for the cross-section of the Earth's population with the knowledge, resources, and intellect to intersect with the other part of the Venn diagram, the people on Earth who are crazy and who are eager to end the world.
As for "unnoticed," what about my Earth's mantle scenario? You could have the goo just cooking down there with nobody noticing until they are triggered at some preset date. Then, you notice too late. The goo could either swarm up into the crust, or perhaps just migrate to the atmosphere and release trillions of tons of prefabbed cyanide ions. Or some fun little airborne neurotoxin, thus making the quantity released much smaller, and therefore much easier to fabricate.
Bloom (I forget the author) had some very plausible stuff about just how far into space the grey goo could get.
As for uploading, I suspect we'll have grey goo plausible long before we can upload. I believe that uploading will depend on the ability to create highly sophisticated nanotech (as well as a host of other technologies), and, as such, the probability of goo will arise much sooner than that of uploading.
So, no. The basic laws of the universe generally point toward it being easier to destroy than to create. I suspect nanotech will be the same way, the stakes are simply that much bigger.
The difficulty I see in this serene, Open Source, ecofriendly, no-money nanotech paradise people propose is that they assume that the people inhabiting it are like they are: rational, intelligent, benevolent, sane, constructive, etc. This is not the case. This isn't even the case for the majority of humanity. I suspect that, if I had something like Harlan Ellison's "Button, Button," only on a large scale, and I distributed a box to 5,000 people, and told them, "press this red button and the world ends," I probably wouldn't have time to drive home before somebody started hammering on that button.
The power of nanotech raises the stakes. Before, it was possible to kill just a few people with a gun. Raise that to a few dozen with a bomb. Jump that higher with some anthrax. Just look at Pakistan and India playing the little nuclear game with each other. They actually have a "Bomb Day" where they celebrate their first detonation. Do you really think that someone there won't say, "Let's turn Pakistan into sludge?" or "Let's dump neurotoxins into India?" History has a pretty scary resume on this kind of thing.
August 2nd, 2000 at 6:58 AM
Re:3. (response to Greg)
I wouldn't count brains out so quickly, it is less than clear to me that AI will develop in short order, even given the brute force processing that MNT allows. As to muscles, that has pretty much already gone the way of the dodo so far as being valuable.
The pie still isn't as big as you evidently think it is, even in the US alone. Furthermore, if you TRIED to divide it equally between everyone (by force, of course, there is no other way such a redistribution could be accomplished), the pie would shrink still further.
The point is to make the whole category of "working people" as meaningful as "serfs" is to present day society.
Even if the economy of Germany were completely insular, reducing the work week by government fiat will result in more unemployment and a lower standard of living than there would be absent such legislation. Rant about Gravity and Thermodynamics, if you want, you will have about as much chance of changing those laws as you do of altering the way economies work.
No amount of "political struggle" or "democracy" would have allowed 95% of us to cease subsistence farming. It was only the technology of high yield farming that allowed this to occur. You want to talk long hours and hard conditions, try subsistence farming.
The figures I have put the per capita income of the world at about $3,500. That sounds like scarcity to me.
Ah, my definition of capitalism is "blinkered ideological rhetoric" as opposed to the totally objective and neutral characterization in your next two sentences :-^)
You seem to be suggesting that common ownership was the pre-existing circumstance. I argue that this is far from being so. Consider, if you will, that writing seems to have been invented to keep accounts of how much grains, livestock, etc, one possessed. At least, this seems to have been the content of the earliest known writing. Furthermore, I don't particularly WANT to live a communal life, but if I did, no one is stopping me from finding others who want that and doing so.
I see no contradiction between being autonomous (making one's own decisions) and being interdependent (having to deal with the decisions that other people make).
I, for one, have yet to see as set-up (Feudalism, anyone or how about a Hunter/Gatherer existence) that I like better than what I have right now, perhaps you would like to propose a viable alternative (no castles in the sky, please). I do expect that if I live to see MNT become what it has potential for being, I will like that still better.
Something like 1/2 of all households in the US own stock, up from the low double digits just a few years ago. Making such ownership universal is very much in keeping with my emphasis on "making everyone rich". I think it is do-able in any number of ways. If we design distinct autonomous entities capable of outcompeting us, rather than merging with our technology (I *WANT* nanomedicine, ASAP!), then I contend we deserve to join the aforementioned dodo.
A characterization that *I* find not at all pejorative.
I would turn that on its head and say that, in this forum, discussion of late 20th century economics is only appropriate to the extent that it has implications on what is possible and desirable about post MNT economics. Once that linkage becomes lost, I would say the discussion has gone Off Topic.
August 2nd, 2000 at 7:56 AM
Re:Grey goo?
To get terror goo, you need malicious, insane, and competent people. Fortunately, this appears to be a much smaller group than just malicious and insane people are. The folks that tried to nerve gas the Tokyo subway actually had some technically trained folks working for them (a first, so far as I have heard), but still failed to kill the thousands that they expected. What I see as the key question is: how difficult is terror goo likely to be to engineer, relative to active shields? The good news is that the defense appears to have a built-in advantage. The goals of stealth (escaping the notice of active shields) and quick replication (reducing the time during which your attack is vulnerable if noticed) appear to be at loggerheads. Given this advantage for active shields, the size of the group of competent people with a vested interest in making GOOD active shields is heartening.
My short answer is that the Earth's Mantle is hardly an ideal environment for self-replicating bots, but if systems can be engineered to tolerate the heat, pressure, and so on then this applies just as much to active shields as terror goo (perhaps more, active shield bots don't need to replicate autonomously). If there is a theme that emerges her it is that the overlap of those wanting to engineer terror goo and those able to do so is (thankfully) small but cannot be assured to be non-zero. Building robust defenses is a vital priority. Provided that it is treated as a priority, we will hopefully be able to prevent the successful implementation of terror goo. Remember, nanomedicine should make people harder to kill in general ("I laugh at your neurotoxin"), by adding specific measures to counter terror goo it should be possible to foil such attempts. Greg
August 2nd, 2000 at 2:58 PM
Avoiding Nanotech War
I read somewhere that a "gift" economy is inherently all-distributive.
August 2nd, 2000 at 3:39 PM
Grey Goo Needed? Maybe.
People have yet to realize that MOST of the people living on this small world are nothing more than mere primates, acting solely on their animal instincts. It is these foul creatures who make the world the crap hole it is now – and thus, it is my belief that if any of us 'intelligent' beings out there even have a slight chance of surviving in the future, the source of the problem must be eliminated as soon as possible. I know anyone who is reading this is probably furious by the words I just said, so let me give a few examples to clear things up and perhaps change your mind: 1) In (1947-(UNKNOWN), a group of geneticists and scientists created a virus at the discretion of the United States government which was supposed to be used in warfare; unfortunately, this man-made virus was made way ahead of its time, and thus, the scientists could not accurately predict it's results, which later led to world wide contamination. This virus is known today as AIDS. 2) In 1991, a scientist by the name of Jacques Benveniste was discredited of his life's work (Molecular Memory – The Memory of Water) even though it had been reproduced by SEVERAL scientists in the laboratory. Conspiracy? Maybe. 3) In 1993, a man in Texas created an Automotive Engine which ran on 90% water. Fearing the death of the oil industry, the Department of Energy offered the man 33 Billion dollars for his engine and placed it on a shelf where it would rot for an eternity. The government definitely does not want a 'clean' world now, does it? These are just a few examples of the travesties which have plagued us in this century alone. When will it end? The answer is, it won't until the 'source' of all our troubles are eliminated. What are those troubles you ask? It's stupid people. What does this have anything to do with Grey Goo? It's simple – the 'grey goo', even though it is unwanted, could be used to actually help us! That's right! The grey goo could and would annihilate most of the world's 'stupid' population. How would we, the 'Enlightened Ones', protect ourselves from the dreaded 'sludge of hell'? Well, I honestly haven't figured that one out completely yet; I'm starting to think that maybe there is no such thing as immunity from such a thing. If the Nanites would listen to at least 'a few' instructions, even though they are insane at the time (especially DNA instructions), then we could literally use people's DNA as a beacon for the goo (kinda like how a piece of aluminum attracts lightning in a thunder storm; the concept would be the same in this case.) What would we do with the goo once its task completed? I haven't figured this one out yet either, but some input would be nice. You have to admit, it is a nice idea!
August 2nd, 2000 at 3:43 PM
Grey Goo Needed? Maybe.
People have yet to realize that MOST of the people living on this small world are nothing more than mere primates, acting solely on their animal instincts. It is these foul creatures who make the world the crap hole it is now – and thus, it is my belief that if any of us 'intelligent' beings out there even have a slight chance of surviving in the future, the source of the problem must be eliminated as soon as possible.
I know anyone who is reading this is probably furious by the words I just said, so let me give a few examples to clear things up and perhaps change your mind:
1) In (1947-(UNKNOWN), a group of geneticists and scientists created a virus at the discretion of the United States government which was supposed to be used in warfare; unfortunately, this man-made virus was made way ahead of its time, and thus, the scientists could not accurately predict it's results, which later led to world wide contamination. This virus is known today as AIDS.
2) In 1991, a scientist by the name of Jacques Benveniste was discredited of his life's work (Molecular Memory – The Memory of Water) even though it had been reproduced by SEVERAL scientists in the laboratory. Conspiracy? Maybe.
3) In 1993, a man in Texas created an Automotive Engine which ran on 90% water. Fearing the death of the oil industry, the Department of Energy offered the man 33 Billion dollars for his engine and placed it on a shelf where it would rot for an eternity. The government definitely does not want a 'clean' world now, does it?
These are just a few examples of the travesties which have plagued us in this century alone. When will it end? The answer is, it won't until the 'source' of all our troubles are eliminated. What are those troubles you ask? It's stupid people.
What does this have anything to do with Grey Goo? It's simple – the 'grey goo', even though it is unwanted, could be used to actually help us! That's right! The grey goo could and would annihilate most of the world's 'stupid' population. How would we, the 'Enlightened Ones', protect ourselves from the dreaded 'sludge of hell'? Well, I honestly haven't figured that one out completely yet; I'm starting to think that maybe there is no such thing as immunity from such a thing. If the Nanites would listen to at least 'a few' instructions, even though they are insane at the time (especially DNA instructions), then we could literally use people's DNA as a beacon for the goo (kinda like how a piece of aluminum attracts lightning in a thunder storm; the concept would be the same in this case.) What would we do with the goo once its task completed? I haven't figured this one out yet either, but some input would be nice.
You have to admit, it is a nice idea!
August 2nd, 2000 at 4:41 PM
Re:3. (response to Greg)
I wouldn't count brains out so quickly, it is less than clear to me that AI will develop in short order, even given the brute force processing that MNT allows.
Okay, what do you mean by short order? How long, in your opinion, before AI eclipses human intelligence? Many think it will happen before MNT. Others think it will come after. Do you think it will take more than, say, another 50 years? Regardless of when, my point stands. People will then have nothing to trade, except for those who own non-human capital. At that point, if not sooner, capitalism fails as a social system.
As to muscles, that has pretty much already gone the way of the dodo so far as being valuable.
How many of us make no use of muscles in our work?
The pie still isn't as big as you evidently think it is, even in the US alone. Furthermore, if you TRIED to divide it equally between everyone (by force, of course, there is no other way such a redistribution could be accomplished), the pie would shrink still further.
What I think is that the pie is not as big as it could be. I agree that equal distribution by fiat would damage if not destroy the economy, but I do not agree that the either the present distribution or that which would result from pure capitalism is optimal. The unfettered market generates an exponentially unequal distribution of wealth, and as a result, as historical experience has proven, capitalism requires redistributive mechanisms in order to function. As for "force," the exponentially unequal distribution that the market creates can only be maintained by force.
Even if the economy of Germany were completely insular, reducing the work week by government fiat will result in more unemployment and a lower standard of living than there would be absent such legislation.
How would it result in more unemployment? How would it result in a lower standard of living, on average, if without such legislation large numbers of people would be excluded from the economy?
No amount of "political struggle" or "democracy" would have allowed 95% of us to cease subsistence farming. It was only the technology of high yield farming that allowed this to occur. You want to talk long hours and hard conditions, try subsistence farming.
Actually, the "technology of high yield farming" together with the iron fist of capitalist law, drove and is still driving countless millions off the land in sorrow. Actually, it is not hard to grow enough food to survive. Quite a relaxed lifestyle, actually. What is hard is to make money this way. And families get foolishly into debt, or accept contract terms they don't understand, or they believe stories they have heard about riches to be made in the cities, and they go off unprepared for the misery they will find themselves trapped into. All this has little to do with technology or economic potential, and much to do with power and powerlessness.
The figures I have put the per capita income of the world at about $3,500. That sounds like scarcity to me.
If the genius of our present technology were applied to raising that figure, it could be raised very dramatically very fast. But instead, the poor are expected to "earn" their way by producing throw-away goods for the world's rich.
You seem to be suggesting that common ownership was the pre-existing circumstance. I argue that this is far from being so.
Of course there was a mix of common and personal ownership, as well as strong communal bonds and responsibilities toward one another.
I see no contradiction between being autonomous (making one's own decisions) and being interdependent (having to deal with the decisions that other people make).
I don't know what you thought I meant, so I'll try it another way. Here we are in the most interdependent society that has ever existed, and the reigning ideology is one more appropriate to the untamed frontier: "I am an isolated individual; I will determine my own fate, make my own way; I will ask for nothing and owe nothing to anyone else." Madness!
…perhaps you would like to propose a viable alternative (no castles in the sky, please)
No, I wouldn't. What I am saying is we have a hard problem. Capitalism works well enough, at least within the advanced countries, for the moment. But it is already challenged to adapt to changing technology, and the kind of radical technologies we discuss here will put it into crisis. In the long run, people will have nothing to trade; every material or intellectual product or service can be provided more efficiently by means of technology. A frozen-in, massively unequal distribution of wealth would be unacceptable, even if everyone had some defined set of "basics," and even that is not guaranteed under capitalism. Indeed, the capitalist economy can continue to function without people as workers, consumers, or even owners. Under a laissez-faire regime, as Moravec argues, that is exactly what classical economic theory predicts should happen.
I don't propose Stalinism, I don't propose anarchy, I don't propose a return to pre-industrial existence. But I put it that our society must evolve away from the capitalist ideal, and back towards community. Incremental, private, and small-scale measures, such as those Bryan Bruns listed, can be part of this process, but ultimately the only counter we have to the power of autonomous capitalist institutions is the power of democratic government.
August 2nd, 2000 at 6:53 PM
Gift culture
A high tech gift culture is what Eric Raymond talks about in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, where reputation is a major incentive to produce software and contribute it to the community.
The low tech version is the northwest coast Native Americans, living among abundant natural resources and competing about who can give away (or destroy) the most stuff at potlatches.
A future version is illustrated in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars novels, with a gift economy of abundance and a scarcity money economy working in parallel.
All of these have forms of ownership and inequality, so if all-distributive means a totally equal distribution, then no, a gift economy is not "inherently all-distributive." But a gift culture operates on very different principles than command hierarchy (government) or market exchange (capitalism). That makes a gift culture interesting if you are interested in possible ways to organize a productive and enjoyable society of abundance and freedom.
August 2nd, 2000 at 10:58 PM
Re:3. (response to Greg)
I have no idea how long AI will take to do, nor do I think AI researchers can give a good estimate because human intelligence is still a very nebulously defined thing. It is nothing like as well defined as MNT, where the major challenge is building nanodevices without having nanodevices in the first place. AI could beat MNT if it is a pure emergent phenomena. Gather so much computing power in such a complex configuration and it just spontaneously occurs, it could happen that way (though I wouldn't count on it). Other than that, I give MNT the edge because what is to be done is so much better defined. The point I made that was missed is that with the coming of cell repair machines, the very distinction between what a human is capable of and what MNT can do becomes meaningless. Why create your evolutionary successor, when you can become your own evolutionary successor. For myself, I rather fancy the idea of technological apotheosis. As far as the future of capitalism, if people think the Internet means there is a "New Economy" wait until MNT shows them what the term REALLY means. My concerns are that each person have control of the technology from out of Nanosystems, chapter 14, which I have taken to calling a cornucopia box and that however we arrange our (really New) economy after that is minimally coercive.
I am not an absolutist zealot, I suspect that free markets may, in fact, be dynamically unstable. But I suggest that a great deal of circumspection be exercised concerning just how much to "fetter". Also, in a post MNT society, I might speculate that even this suspected instability might go away. After all, just what *is* a monopoly in an age where cornucopia boxes are everywhere?
By raising the cost of employing workers, which you do by constraining the agreements that can be made with employees, you add extra incentive (which would otherwise not be there) to substitute capital for labor. When this is no longer effective one simply forgoes the opportunity to expand because one can't make enough money at it. On a macro scale, the result is fewer jobs and a lower standard of living. Even though economists are not big on agreeing (ask 4 economists a question and get 5 opinions), I think you could get a consensus that this is how things are.
Query: Have you ever actually survived only on what you have grown for a sustained period of time- without modern seeds fertilizers and farming implements, that is? Experience has taught me to be wary of claims that something is not difficult by someone who has yet to do it. I have yet to hear of a farmer, ancient or modern, who thinks that farming "isn't hard". The amount of wear and tear (quite literally) on the skeletons of our pastoral ancestors also tells a different story.
If subsistence farming were really as easy a life as you depict it, I think that the attractions of city life would be simple to resist ("How you going to keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paris"). Convincing people to act against their own interest is: A) HARD to do B)rarely, if ever, universally successful C)unsustainable over the long haul. Stupidity may be ubiquitous, but it is NOT universal.
Do you have any Idea what you just blithely asserted. Prior to capitalism and industrial technology the growth of per capita income was much less than 1%, it took GENERATIONS to double per capita income. Even today a full throttle, pedal to the metal economic expansion of double digits is generally unsustainable for more than a short period. China is desperately trying to do this, in order to stave of social unrest- and failing. India isn't even in that ball park, and that's a third of the world's population right between the two. Simple mathematics tells you the upshot is a doubling time a decade or longer, and with current day technology, I guarantee this will ruin the ecology, if done. The only way that I can see to grow faster with less environmental impact is to make use of the power of self replicating systems and MNT is the best shot that I see us having of harnessing that power. If you have got an alternative idea, I'm all ears.
This is the part I don't get, how do you "freeze-in" an massively unequal distribution of wealth in a world where everyone has a cornucopia box? One of the interesting thing about cornucopia boxes is that they could be designed to use available materials, sure it takes more energy than using a prepared feedstock, but just use the box itself to produce a solar array of sufficient size and you are good to go, you can disconnect from the grid and take it from there. From then on, your decision to, and amount of, participation in the economy becomes strictly voluntary.
But once the individual is no longer need participate in the economy at all ,in order to survive, what power do autonomous capitalist institutions retain? Furthermore, in a post MNT world, what can government (democratic or otherwise) do for us that we cannot do for ourselves? This last is not a simple question, but it is a very important one, IMO. It could be that the reason all of the libertarian dreams remain only dreams is that MNT is a necessary condition for a libertarian scheme to work. Is it a sufficient condition, I don't know. To connect this to the Vinge thread, I noticed this implication in Across Realtime. I mentioned it to Vinge when I next saw him to see if it he did it purposefully. He told me that it was not a message consciously inserted in the story, but it did work that way. Greg
August 3rd, 2000 at 12:10 AM
Re:Grey Goo Needed? Maybe.
I doubt that we could gene-engineer something as complex as HIV today, to say nothing of 1974 when the whole idea of a retrovirus was nascent and the first discovery of a human retrovirus was still years in the future.
But was it ever replicated OUTSIDE Benveniste's laboratory. The problem here is that Benveniste wanted to show that dilution to the point where not even one atom of the original is left in the solution (statistically speaking) does not pose a barrier to accepting his particular variant of alternative medicine (which insists that more dilute solutions are stronger than more concentrated ones). Letting such bias creep into one's results is all too easy, as in this case.
90% water may or may not be exceptional, depending on what the other 10% is. 33 Billion, eh, that puts him in the league with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, so how come no one has ever heard of him? And just what, pray tell, is the vested interest that the government has in having a DIRTY world?
[Biting my tongue so hard that it bleeds]
Oh, the temptation! Greg- Well, in my own defense, I did make an attempt, and I didn't actually say anything…
August 3rd, 2000 at 6:21 AM
Re:Grey goo?
Well, like I said, you have to draw out the Venn diagram between madmen and competence. Unfortunately, I cannot say that Madmen upside-down-U NanotechGods = {0}, always, forever. All it takes is one.
I also don't see defense as having an advantage, at all. The laws of the universe point towards entropy, chaos, disease, destruction, decay, rot, and rust. It has always been easier to destroy than to create. Look at the atomic bomb. While it is a poor analogy, we can't exactly fight atomics with atomics, defensively. Guns came a long time before bulletproof vests, poisons show up before antidotes, diseases appear long before cures (how long until HIV goes away?). Virii wipe many computers before Symantec or McAfee deliver an antivirus. The crux is that we only have the one computer, Earth. If it gets wiped, game over.
I guess my basic point is that the "Capacity to destroy the world" will arrive before the "Capacity to stop the world-destroying capacity" will. Offensive tech always comes first. Now, the stakes are much higher. Active shields (ala Bloom's "immune systems") will show up long, long after nanotech capable of dumping neurotoxins, or infiltrating all primates and turning their mitochondria to a fine goo on July 1, 2030 will. The nanomedicine will always be playing catch-up.
My "unnoticed" scenario isn't just for Earth's mantle, we could do it any number of ways. HIV is actually a pretty good model — nobody knew about it until it was widespread, and the symptoms don't show until long after you have it. Any number of stealth scenarios may be dreamed, and defense will always have to play "catch up." The problem with this is that offense would have the capacity to make sure you don't even have the chance to catch up.
August 3rd, 2000 at 3:19 PM
Re:3. (response to Greg)
I find this a cop-out. I'm sure you don't need any pointers to the literature predicting human-equivalent AI, and beyond, within a few decades. I asked if you thought it would take more than 50 years; you did not respond. But we can discuss the implications without settling on a particular date.
I see; you are in favor of human extinction anyway.
If "substitution of capital for labor" is possible, it should be done (assuming you are in favor of utilizing technology). If that results in less need for labor, in order to achieve the same output, then reducing the standard number of hours worked, in order to share the work, will, by maximizing employment and hence purchasing power, result in a maximization of output. However, the market will not do this automatically, as long as employers can take the more immediately profitable option of laying people off and making the remainder work the same long hours. Please don't respond to this by telling me that 4 out of 5 "economists" disagree with me.
No, and I take it neither have you. But I'll stand by my statement that it is not hard to grow enough food for personal consumption, if you have enough good land, and that people have been driven and are being driven off the land against their will by economic and other coercive forces. Of course, in some cases it is simply overpopulation, and of course modern agriculture is needed to feed large population densities. But it can be argued that this overpopulation itself is a product of modern technology. I am not saying Go Back! What I am saying is you should not take this simplistic point of view that technological "progress" and the workings of the "free market" results always or only in the betterment of the human condition.
Yes, I do know what I asserted. I'll say it again, at greater length. Having people in poor countries produce cheap goods in sweatshops for market in rich countries cannot possibly be a more efficient way of fostering development in the poor countries than supplying them with appropriate capital and technology to produce for themselves the things that they need to improve their condition. However, under capitalism, such a direct approach is impossible on the scale that would be needed in order to make it successful. Of course, we are constantly hearing of direct aid initiatives which fail, due to corruption, poor planning, but most of all, due to the fact that such initiatives have only been undertaken on a miserly scale. Do you doubt this? Ask a proponent of globalization how the amount of private investment flowing to Third World countries compares with the amount of direct aid. But this investment is being done for the purpose of exploiting cheap labor, not for the purpose of improving living standards in target countries. If we cared enough to do something about raising the standard of living for the world's poorest, we would have done so long ago. But "we" in this case does not mean The People, it means The Money.
If people cannot themselves produce anything of market value, then everyone is stuck with whatever amount of capital wealth they have, relative to everyone else. There is no more social mobility. However, if they are still free to trade stocks, then those who have the most powerful AI resources will make the smartest investments, gaining an ever-greater share of the total wealth. It is possible that the final oligarchs may not even be human, but I understand from your previous comment that this does not necessarily bother you.
So you propose a kind of Brave New Deal which guarantees everyone a "cornucopia box," and leave it at that. Would these boxes have the ability to build other boxes? Would there be a limit on the amount of "available materials" one could use? If the answer is "no," how do you prevent people from grabbing ever-greater amounts, building weapons, warring, etc. If the answer is "yes," how would the limits be set? Why do you expect people to be satisfied with little shares and no possibility of getting more, while others would have so much? Or are you assuming some radical egalitarian redistribution? How do you get the rich to agree to that?
As always, the coercive military power of the State, which they will use to enforce their claim of ownership over the resources of this and other worlds. Unless, of course, the State functions as a democracy, and the people exercise their rights.
Protect us from theives.
…ordinary people do still, after all, have some sense of where their real interests lie.
MNT is proof that the Libertarian scheme cannot work for the good of humanity.
August 3rd, 2000 at 5:56 PM
Re:Grey goo?
Okay, so there is the possibility that terror goo will be created. No one is in disagreement there. Your major flaw, however, seems to be in attacking open source. There is no reason that proprietary nanotech will be safer than open source. (see my post several levels up)
To illustrate this, consider the number of script kiddies in the world. Now consider the number of crakcers. Now, whether crackers release only binaries or open source code, script kiddies go about trying to cause chaos and crack systems. Thus, there may be people who write terror goo, but open source or proprietary, it will still try to be used by terrorist, largly unsuccessfully.
August 4th, 2000 at 12:46 AM
lead – florentine renaissance
If you are pursuing this idea about what will happen when nanotechnology becomes ubiquitous, can I suggest serious scholarly research into the Italian renaissance. Commercial activities in the centuries leading up to the enlightenment in Florence rushed in a leisure society, which resulted in the flowering of intellectual activity. Quite possibly, much the same could occur in the following centuries – there is much work to do in encoding existing literature and knowledge into a new information medium, and restoring cultural archives and historical travel sites, so that society could become largely a leisure society. However, people will be constrained by money, this is why not everyone will be able to afford the authentic experience of visiting Venice, but perhaps will have to make do with television and books.
Further more – open source can be framed into existing economic terms – because it is a certain type of infrastructure that by being open, has removed risks and provided a platform for innovation (in the same way that an operating system is open, and acts as a platform for evolutionary innovation).
Best regards,
Matthew.
(on sabbatical in Venice, Italy)
August 4th, 2000 at 6:55 AM
Re:Grey goo?
No, look at it this way…and I will continue the script kiddie analogy…
In the "closed-source" model, we get relatively harmless "binaries" (prefabbed nanotech assemblers) that build something relatively harmeless, like whipped cream. It would be damned hard to take that prefabbed assembler and get it to self-replicate (because they wouldn't have put that kind of capability in it) and chuck out neurotoxin on July 1, 2030. The number of people who have both the inclination, skill, knowledge, and resources to reverse engineer a decent piece of nanotech and make some bit of nastiness out of it tends towards zero.
In the "open-source" model, everyone gets source code to all kinds of assemblers, as well as their own "compilers," which would be little knots of factories, maybe fist-sized, that can, after being fed source, build an assembler to your specification. Edit away. The difficult part, reverse engineering, is gone. A lot of people can program, but very few can look at page after page of raw hex and nothing but and understand how it all works. Given that the raw hex for assemblers would be hard to see (you'll need a scanning tunneling microscope) and hard to understand (how's your QM knowledge?) and really really hard to make (unless everyone has a compiler in the open-source scenario), we're safe.
In the latter model, grey goo (or terror goo) or brown goo (I suspect it'll actually be brown) would be far, far easier to create. Analogies of this would be nuclear weaponry. As soon as the secret got out (thank you, Rosenbergs), everyone was building bombs with them, but you didn't see a lot of folks rushing out to make reactors. Iraq is an excellent example, busting their asses to get chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry while essentially failing to serve the needs of the public. It only takes one Iraq.
Your cracker analogy fails because The Good Guys aren't releasing harmful binaries/assemblers. They are releasing friendly, safe assemblers. Script kiddies themselves are only a secondary issue, increasing an already existing probability that a tool created with malevolent intent will be used. Script kiddies don't make tools, only use them. I'm more concerned about the real hackers/crackers (I'm not getting into that particular nomenclature debate) who have real skill and what they could do given the source code.
As scientists, we have far, far too often simply hurled our inventions out into the world hoping that the "good people" (politicians, zealots, madmen) of the world will put them to good use. History has shown us that we cannot trust that. We are now in an endgame. If this tool gets out of hand before defenses are created (and see an ealier post why I think that the defenses will come much later), then we will not have the opportunity to "fix things."
August 4th, 2000 at 8:56 PM
Re:Grey goo?
I can see where you are comming from, but there is something you seem to be forgetting: some of those "Good Guys" happen to be in the defense business (which generally means some weapons are going to be made). Maybe we won't make them here in America, but why wouldn't some Iraqi 'defense' corporation license rights to certain kinds of nanotech and then use this to build terror goo and brown goo (I not going to refere to grey goo in this sense since I consider grey goo mostly to be an accident, not an intent). Think of this like a cracker who gets a contract from Microsoft to put a feature in OutlookExperss, get some source code to the program along the way, and after leaving the job writes a nasty worm based on that knowledge. Then, he gives it to the script kiddies (whether this macro worm is binary only or not at this point is moot). Thus, the Iraqi corproation develops terror goo, gives it to terrorist, and they go about their thing. Whether or not nanotech is open sourced, some people are going to put it to bad uses.
Back on to why open source nanotech is better, I'll once again state that we can better build defenses to a weapon if we know how that weapon works (in the way we can build nuclear defenses since we know how nuclear bombs work).
August 7th, 2000 at 7:14 AM
Re:Grey goo?
You keep ignoring my main points.
Think of Alfred Nobel. He felt so guilty that he had to come up with the Nobel Prize. Think Oppenheimer, "I have become Shiva, destroyer of worlds." When gunpowder was first invented, people weren't using it for thoughtful construction projects: it was wasted on firecrackers and quickly made into guns, defenses for which evolved much, much later.
Until someone can solve the timing problem, stating that "we'll just have nanotech defenses" reveals ignorance of the history of the impacts of each and every Janus-faced scientific development that has the potential for destruction and creation. With previous developments, the Timing Problem could almost be ignored. "So a few people die," or "so a few villages die," or, with nukes, "so we irradiate 100 square kilometers of land." "We will figure out a defense eventually." With nanotech, we may not have that "eventually."
August 7th, 2000 at 4:04 PM
Open source protection
Ahh, but open source makes eventually come a lot sooner. For example, it can take years for bugs and security holes to get fixed in proprietary OSes (if they ever get fixed!), yet most open source OSes fix bugs and (esp.) security holes in a matter of hours and, at the worst, days. Most of the long standing bugs in open source projects have to do with dealing with proprietary hardware/software. With prorietary nanotech, it could still take years before nanodefense is available, just as it took years for bullet proof vest to develop and is still taking a long time to come up with some kind of nuclear defense system other than moving everything underground, providing renewable resources, et al.. If nuclear defense were opened up to day to the average scientist (even undergrads) rather than held tightly by the reigns of the government and defense corporations that occasionally call on academica when they hit a really tough problem, we would probably already be safe enough that it would take millions of missles and very rare computer computation glitch for one to get through. In the same way, with open source nanotech we would probably have defenses for terror goo (and just about any other goo) within a matter of hours, if lots of people became good at programming nanobots and had home nanofabs. If the skills of the people who read BugTraq were directed towards nanotech, the world would be safe from just about any kind of goo.
August 8th, 2000 at 6:50 AM
Re:Open source protection
"Open source makes eventually come a lot sooner."
*cough*Mozilla*cough*
Open source is not a panacea. Don't make it into a religion. Linux is dangerously close to becoming one.
Actually, let's talk about the nukes. So far, our anti-nuke tactics fall into two categories:
I think the first of the two we can safely ignore. Mutually Assured Destruction is not really a defense so much as a scare tactic.
Shooting down oncoming missiles is where we can concentrate this inquiry. Open source doesn't make this kind of problem any easier. Many of the components of the missile tracking-and-neutralizing problem are already "open sourced" in the sense that they are problems that have been worked on for a long time, not under the DoD. These are things like anticipation, recognition, tracking, and so forth. They'll show up in robotics work, facial recognition, pretty much everywhere. Being "open source" has not helped out our nuclear defenses.
Let's now turn to guns and Kevlar. Well, you don't really need much of an insight into guns to figure out that you need a bulletproof vest, you just have to design one properly. That problem was "open source" in that the information relating to the problem was open to all comers. How long did it take to solve that again?
HIV, while not a weapon (unless you're a conspiracy nut like the other guy on this thread), is pretty much the same problem. Here we have all the info on this problem, open sourced to everyone. Where's our solution?
Open source does not instantly guarantee an answer, it doesn't even guarantee that there will be an answer. It is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution to any problem.
All "open-sourcing" nanotech will do is to up the general arms race. We had guns, so they had to have guns. Then Kelvar vests. Then someone else develops copkiller bullets. They got bombs, so we have to get bombs. Then we start up with SCUDs. Open source has not exactly calmed down the arms race.
August 19th, 2000 at 11:51 AM
Re:Gift culture
Thanks for clarifying 'gift culture' for me, Mr Bruns. -"Lee"
August 24th, 2000 at 4:00 PM
student
Hello, my name is Alex Future Bokov. I am a cell and molecular biology student at the University of Michigan. I've started TransDot, helped start ExtroDot, administer the TransEast and transhuman@logrus.org mailing lists, and am working on a number of other online community and online collaboration projects both professionally and as a matter of personal interest.
August 28th, 2000 at 4:21 PM
Re:Sponsor a Student: "reply to this" to apply
I am an undergraduate physics student at UCLA and I would like to apply for the fee waiver to the Sr. Assoc. Gathering in Palo Alto. I don't have the financial resources to become a senior associate, but I would if I could. I'm not sure what I could contribute to the gathering technically as I am just starting my second year, but I would certainly enjoy a chance to meet some of the people that I have been reading about. I read the Foresight updates, nanodot, nanozine, and am a regular poster on sci.nanotech. I believe that nanotech will change the world and the "human condition" both of which I am anxious to escape by some other means then dying, IE major augmentation and/or uploading, and space travel. I would be very interested to find out about how far along we are now from some of the "insiders" in the field and what their thoughts are about things like assemblers, medicine, nanocomputers, AI, etc. I would like to be able to meet other people who are transhumanists, extropians, or nanotech people, people who think about the singularity and nanotech and it's impact on our lives and what we can do to make a nice world in which to spend our millennia. Sincerely, Max Comess
August 31st, 2000 at 8:49 AM
Re:Sponsor a Student: "reply to this" to apply
My name is Oleg Kaganovich, and I am a second year grad student at Columbia Business School. While my primary career is focused on technology and venture capital, I have always been fascinated by nanotech, and would enjoy both learning from what everyone has to say, along with adding my own thoughts when the opportunity allowed. As I am a student in the last stretch of grad school, paying to become an associate (this year) is not a feasible option. Nevertheless, by this time next year, I look forward to applying for full-paying associate status. Thank you.
February 26th, 2002 at 7:24 AM
Re:Sponsor a Student: "reply to this" to apply
I'm a third year Furniture Design student at the Rhode Island School of Design. I previously spent three years attending the Kansas City Art Institute, majoring in sculpture. I transfered to RISD shortly before graduating, finding a need to explore more challenge. In attending the furniture department of RISD, I am finding it more and more difficult to experiment with new materials, and even some traditional materials, because of cost. I work primarily in wood and metals, however I'm beginning to branch into solar energy and fiber optic lighting. I have written to many manufacturers of these technologies asking for donations, but very few reply (none with optimism). I have one year left in this department after this semester ('02). The struggle of finances and material will be pushed, however, it's unfortunate when things that can happen won't silmply because the material is not there. Thank You
August 17th, 2005 at 5:03 PM
Well, I fully agree with your comment.
Martin
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