Crowdsourced stock market trading

Stock market trading has become a dirty word, or if not that, at least uninteresting. Wall Street excesses and the 2008 crash have led to little recent opportunity for financial return (non-existent interest rates for saving, and flat stock markets for equities (the S&P 500 return in 2011 was 0% (S&P 1257 at 12/31/10, 1258 at 12/31/11). Gold has been one of the only asset classes to realize real return (142% five-year return, $632 as of 12/28/06, $1531 as of 12/29/11). The particular subjective day trader gave way to faceless high-frequency computer algorithms as one of the only means of squeezing profits out of the stock market.

One thing that could turn this around, and have the dual benefit of bringing more transparency to markets and market practices is crowdsourcing. The enormous amounts of clean, freely available, computable, straightforward-to-understand data without privacy issues are ideal for crowdsourced manipulation.

Earlier attempts at applying crowdsourcing to stock market trading (for example, Yahoo Prediction Markets with leaderboard-style tracking of traders’ mock portfolios) fell by the wayside with the 2008 crash, but the concept could be reincarnated. There are several obvious ways to deploy crowdsourcing in stock market trading startups:

1. First would be a direct implementation of crowdsourcing as from the Wikinomics, fold.it, eteRNA model: making usable web-based datasets available to the wisdom-of-crowds to apply diverse ideas from different disciplines, often resulting in better results than those produced by the ‘experts’ in any field. Leaderboards, competition, leveling-up, forums, badges, and other gamefication techniques would be expected.
2. Second would be a platform where real-life traders can open source their trades, either before or after execution. Interested traders would grant open access to their trade logs, inviting crowd review to find winning trades, strategies, and traders, and conduct meta-analyses like what strategies work well in a high-volatility environment, a down economy, etc.
3. Third would be prediction markets 2.0, a more social gamefication implementation of prediction markets for stock trading, sales forecasting, movie hit projections, elections, and flu outbreaks through platforms like Iowa Electronic Markets, Intrade, etc.

Future of fashion

A new idea, spray-painted clothing, joins digital textile printing and 3-D printed clothing as a possible tool for creating the future of fashion.

Spanish fashion designer Manel Torres, working together with scientists from University College London, has developed spray-on fabric (Figure 1). Short fibers of wool, linen or acrylic are mixed with a polymer solvent which binds immediately as they are sprayed onto a person or mannequin.

Figure 1: Spray-on Fabric developed by designed Manel Torres (Source)

Clothing made from spray-on fabric was presented at the Science in Style fashion show, September 21, 2010 in London (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Science in Style, London, September 21, 2010 (Source)

There are many speculations about the wide range of potential applications for spray-on fabric. Some of the obvious ideas for on-demand fabric are sterile bandages and military and crisis relief use. Practical uses are interesting too. For example, to the extent the material is recyclable and cost-effective, being able to spray-on additional layers when feeling cold, and easily remove and discard them when hot could be quite convenient. Rain gear could be similarly donned and discarded. The long-expected futurist’s dream of on-demand 3D clothing printing booths could be closer to being realized.

Long-tail economics extended to physical objects

Chris Anderson, editor of WIRED magazine, gave an excellent talk on August 5, 2010 at the PARC Forum. He explained how the long-tail economic models which have driven digital content (allowing consumers to access books, music, and movies in the 80% of the market that is not blockbusters) are now starting to appear in the world of physical goods.

The process of realizing long-tail economics in any sector is that of going one-to-many; democratizing the tools of creation, then the tools of production, and finally the tools of distribution. This is what happened with internet content such as publishing, where it is now easy for anyone to create, produce, and distribute content with blogs, twitter feeds, YouTube, etc. This has also happened with other digital content and some physical goods that are ordered and distributed via internet models (e.g.; Amazon, Zappos, etc.).

The new industrial revolution, argues Anderson, is in opensource hardware factories. The supply chain has now opened up to the digital and the small. The ability to make and distribute anything massively decentralizes traditional manufacturing and could completely reorganize industrial economies…atoms are the new bits. Matthew Sobol’s holons (communities of local resilience and sustainability) are in the works. Goods can be self-designed or crafted from available digital designs (e.g.; communities like ShapeWays and Ponoko), and then printed locally on the MakerBot or ordered from Alibaba or other global manufacturies. Opensource manufacturing is starting to have an impact on industries like auto design and construction (e.g.; Local Motors), drones (e.g.; DIY Drones), and general hardware design (empowered by the Beagle Board and Arduino).

It is likely that long-tail economics can be applied to many other areas. Medicine is the next obvious example, where health care, health maintenance, drug development, and disease treatment are already starting to shift into n=1 or n=small group tiers of greater customization and ideally, lower cost as more precision is obtained in the measuring and understanding of disease and wellness.

Technology shapes man or man shapes technology?

An interesting philosophical question to probe is the nature of technology. One view is that technology is simply tools that humanity has created to further its will, to enable and reinforce human nature and evolutionary tendencies. Another view is that there are places of crossover, where technology can actually change humans, human nature, and biological drives, both unintentionally and by design.

In the contemporary era of exponentially growing technologies in multiple fields, it is critical to understand what sorts of impacts different technologies may have. One analysis framework is to group technologies by those which could have an immediate direct influence on human morphology, and those that would not. For example, there could be the rapid advent of significantly more dramatic technologies than have been experienced to date. While these new technologies could change some aspects of life, human biological drives could remain unchanged, and therefore the structure and dynamics of human societal organization, interaction, and goal pursuit could also remain unchanged. Some examples of these advances could include the realization of molecular nanotechnology, quantum computing, cold fusion, and immortality. Even with several of these technologies implemented, in the seemingly different world of a post-scarcity economy where material goods and energy would be essentially free, humanity could still be ordered around the same familiar biologically-driven goals.

The other group of technologies is those which could possibly have a near-term impact on the structure and form of what it means to be human. The area with the greatest possible change is improving human mental capability. There have been several significant advances in a variety of neurology-related fields in the last few years that if ultimately realized, could potentially alter human morphology. Even the resolution of all mental pathologies such as Parkinson’s disease, depression, stroke rehabilitation, and addiction would constitute morphological change at a basic level. Augmenting cognition and deliberately managing biophysical states would constitute morphological change at other levels.

How Daemon/Freedom is starting to happen

The books by Daniel Suarez, Daemon and Freedom, portray a possible extension of the world of today. Some elements contemplated in the books are obviously already in place such as worldwide gaming communities like World of Warcraft (11 million subscribers as of December 2008) and other MMORPGs. Botnetting of government and corporate computers is another existing feature of the contemporary world. High-magnitude financial crises (e.g., 2008) and dissatisfaction with the way they are handled is another obvious parallel, with grassroots responses such as the Move your Money movement to use local banks that did not receive bailout funds.

At a broader level, one of the most interesting ways that fundamental economic transformation could happen is the way that humans worldwide are starting to behave like a vast complex adaptive system (CAS).

1) Location-based services check-ins
Mobile-device users are checking in at the different physical locations they visit using FourSquare, Loopt, and other location-based services (LBS). People are shifting their physical-world behavior to unlock certain badges and points. In addition to earning badges and mayorships for the number of check-ins to a particular location, opt-in communities could develop using LBS platforms to award the type of check-ins, giving points and badges for behavior valued by the community. FourSquare's API is available and new applications are already being created. A simple example of rewarded behavior would be receiving double points for gym visits, escalating levels over time as visits accumulate. Another example for certain user communities might be earning double points for check-ins at local coffee shops vs. Starbucks. Starbucks actually comprises over 30% of all check-ins for LBS service Loopt.

Not just the geographical location, but also the type of activities could be rewarded. For example, there could be creativity, collaboration, learning, and teaching badges from check-ins at places like the TechShop, BioCurious, Hacker Dojo, or the Hub (social venturing collaboration). There could be time and location tagging for event attendance interpolation. Not every user would want this detail or would make their activity public, but this functionality could be useful for life-logging too. There could be sensors on public transit registering user behavior or some other way to ‘check in’ to transportation-based behavior.

There could be both incentives for positive behavior and disincentives for negative behavior. For example, users could receive points for not doing behaviors like checking in at fast-food restaurants, not going to gas stations (congratulations, you only went to a gas-station once this month!). A trustable automated check-in system could provide behavior validation, although there are obvious hacks such as not bringing the mobile device when going to fast-food locations. Finally, the spirit of incentivized check-ins should be opt-in, fun, and empowering, not didactic.

2) Real-time economy feeds
A second interesting complex adaptive system element that is arising is a real-time economy feed in the form of Blippy. Parts of the feed are publicly open and other parts just to the user community. The feed provides immediacy, transparency, and detail regarding economic activity, like real-time game-like granularity. Features could be added for zooming into views of more or less detail (e.g., real-time to-date, Amazon’s sales are down this month vs. last month). The user community can comment and interact around specific purchases.

In addition to the democratic openness of a real-time economy feed, this platform could be used the same was as LBS check-ins to reward certain behaviors. Blippy users could earn points for certain types of purchases, like carbon-neutral products certified by GoodGuide, Green Home, or ClimateCooler. Lower energy usage could be rewarded. With detailed purchase granularity, behavioral goals could be facilitated (e.g., Congratulations, you did not buy cigarettes this month! Congratulations, you bought less ice cream this month!)

3) DIYBio email list
A third fascinating development of humans as a complex adaptive system for change is the DIYbio movement. DIYbio is a worldwide self-sustaining collaborative community arising to build a new or complementary scientific order in biology. The story is told through these snippets of recent postings…

• DIYbio meeting Wednesday Jan 13th at 7PM: So all the DIYbio groups have hacked 300X microscopes out of $7 webcams.
• Plant stilbenes, SIRT1 activators; request for assistance: Hi, I am looking for tropical crop plants that produce phytoalexins called stilbenes; phenolic chemicals, that among other things, include molecules that activate the SIRT1 deacetylase. For the moment I am restricting my search to plants of the Fabaceae subfam. Faboideae (pea group). Currently, I am looking at the literature on Cajanus cajan (pigeonpea) & Arachis hypogaea (peanut, groundnut). I am also looking at literature on non-resveratrol stilbene activators of SIRT 1. I have linked two relevant papers for context.
• DIY movement in Shenzhen, China: I'm looking for a previous post about a DIY movement in Shenzhen, China, somebody posted it before but I can't find it now? It wasn't bio focused, more about electronics.

Future of physical proximity

Where will you live? How would concepts and norms of physical proximity evolve if cars were no longer the dominant form of transportation? How would residential areas self-organize if not laid out around the needs of cars and roads? Imagine gardens replacing driveways and roadways. What if people just walked outside of their houses or onto their apartment rooftops to alight via jetpack, smartpod or small foldable, perhaps future versions of the MIT car. At present, cities, suburbs and whole countries are structured per the space dictates of motor vehicular transportation systems.

Nanoreality or rackspace reality?
There are two obvious future scenarios. There may either be a radical mastery and use of the physical world through nanomanufacturing or a quasi-obsolescence of the physical world as people upload to digital mindfile racks and live in virtual reality. The only future demand for the physical world might be for vacationing and novelty (‘hey, let’s download into a corporeal form this weekend and check out Real Nature, even though Real Nature is sensorially dull compared to Virtual Nature’).

Work 2.0
The degree of simultaneous advances is relevant for evaluating which scenario may arise. For example, economically, must people work? What is the nature of future work? Creative and productive activity (Work 2.0) might all take place in virtual reality. Smart robots may have taken over many physical services and artificial intelligences may have taken over most knowledge work. Would people be able to do whatever work they need to from home or would there be physical proximity and transportation proximity requirements as there are now?

Portable housing and airsteading
Next-level mastery of the physical world could mean that people stay incorporeal and live in portable residential pods. Airsteading (a more flexible version of seasteading) could be the norm; docking on-demand as boats or RVs do, in different airspaces for a night or a year. Docking fees could include nanofeedstock streams and higher bandwidth more secure wifi and datastorage than that ubiquitously available on the worldnets. Mobile housing and airsteading could help fulfill the ‘warmth of the herd’ need and facilitate the intellectual capital congregation possibilities that cities have afforded since the early days of human civilization.

Economic fallacies II

Fallacy #3: The singularity is a great investment opportunity
A technological revolution like that brought about by the PC or the Internet is a great investment opportunity. Current possibilities for this kind of compound growth in technology-driven financial returns include alternative energy, genomics, personalized medicine, anti-aging therapies, 3d data manipulation tools and narrowly-applied artificial intelligence.

A technological singularity is not necessarily a great investment opportunity. A technological singularity implies change so radical and diffuse that prior models for understanding and exploiting or profiting from the world will no longer work. There is a substantial risk that financial markets as they are known today could disappear. Growth, alpha and superior financial returns may be irrelevant in a post-traditional financial markets era. Planning for the possibility of a technological singularity suggests a much broader definition of what the assets of the future may be and allocating to these areas, a substantial shift away from the traditional asset preservation and financial returns that outpace inflation in the long-run mindset of today.


Fallacy #4: Economic systems become irrelevant in a post-scarcity economy
This is the notion that economies and markets go away in a post-scarcity economy for material goods. At present, an increasing number of goods and services are becoming available for free or offered via modern business models such as the freemium. In the future, substantially all material needs may be easily met at low cost or for free in a molecular-nanotech society, but scarcity as an economic dynamic is likely to persist and economics systems in general are also likely to continue.

Scarcity would be perceived in whatever material resources were not yet plentifully available and in any finite resources such as time, ideas, attention, emotion, reputation, quality, etc. Economic system dynamics could change substantially, for example, property tax would not make sense in a world where nanotech could rapidly build or absorb structures. Unless economics and markets as the most effective means of resource distribution are superceded, they are likely to endure.


Fallacy #5: Social capital markets need not deliver competitive returns
The conventional notion is that it is acceptable for social capital market investments to deliver lower returns than traditional financial instruments. Social capital market investment products include SRI equity funds, corporate governance initiatives, social capital venturing (private equity), fair trade coffee and organic products. On average, consumers are willing to spend 5% more for attribute products (products with affinity attributes such as fair trade, local, organic, etc.) and investors have been willing to sacrifice 5% or more in financial return for socially responsible investments.

However, after some implementation time lag, social capital could have equal or higher returns. Sustainable socially responsible businesses should be more profitable not less. Both direct tangible economic benefits can accrue as well as the indirect benefits of marketing and market-knowledge that the business is more principled and sustainable. Corporate governance and other green or social initiatives should benefit the bottom line, not penalize it. The notion that return and social good are mutually exclusive is a fallacy.

The article with all nine fallacies is available here

Future of taxes

The advent of a post-scarcity material goods economy could revolutionize more than just material goods.

Taxes based on income, consumption (sales tax) and property would make little sense in a world where people have a minimal need to work and can build and recycle buildings and objects at will, perhaps including land.

Need for taxes does not evaporate
An alternative means of taxation would need to be established. The amount and type of public services demanded would be shifting too in this future environment, but it is likely that some degree of public services would be needed at least in the short term which would require tax revenues.

Basis for taxation is a fairly easily resolved problem, at least in terms of methodology although perhaps not implementation. The easiest tax solution would be to return to the poll tax, a fixed fee for each adult. Of course this might only be a stopgap measure until any possibility of multiple electronic copies and physical embodiments of people/intelligences became real.

World financial system
A big portion of the world financial system is also collateral-based. There are $14.0 trillion in outstanding mortgages in the U.S. (Sep 2007) perhaps lower by a half trillion per the subprime crisis, about the same as the annual $13.9 trillion GDP (2007), but less than the $25 trillion NYSE market capitalization (2006).

The market capitalization of listed companies is based on perceptions of their future prospects. Companies will have been in on the shift and indeed creating the shift to a post-scarcity material goods economy and are likely to have been adjusting along the way. The mortgage industry, 80% of whose value depends on houses and buildings as collateral (20% on land values) would have to change quite a bit.

Future strategies for the mortgage industry
Once the mortgage industry even starts to suspect a possible endgame of real estate structures being worthless since they can be generated at will, it should start bringing loan terms way in, no more long-dated 30 year mortgages but much shorter periods of 5 or 10 years with periodic re-evaluations and other reset stipulations.

The visionaries will short or get out of the mortgage business and mortgage stocks and bonds, but there does not seem to be a way out of 80-100% unrecoverable value slippage. During the period of anticipating the post-scarcity material goods economy, the value of houses and existing mortgages could decrease, requiring revaluations by mortgage companies and realistically some sort of government assistance or bailout. It would not make sense to hold borrowers nationwide responsible for loans whose values have dramatically declined. The housing futures market would grow in use as a tool for all parties, homeowners, borrowers, lenders and speculators, to manage their exposure.

Post-scarcity economy

The long-term future economy is a post-scarcity economy (PSE), where substantially all human material needs are easily met at low cost or for free. The term post-scarcity economy is a bit of a misnomer since only the scarcity of material goods is likely to recede. The economy itself and scarcity as an economic dynamic will probably persist, for example, scarcity of time, energy, processing power and creative ideas.

The future economy will likely be realized in phases. Some material goods would be replaced or provided at near-zero cost at the outset, perhaps certain classes of items or goods like fuel, then more items such as food, then substantially all material goods. Fancier items like high-end designed objects and medical treatments would probably not be available in the earlier phases.

What will happen to services as material goods are increasingly provided at minimal cost? Initially services would be unchanged, but over time, nearly all current services could be replaced by technology-advanced near-zero cost alternatives. As Josh Hall suggests in Nanofuture, nanobots could provide daily hair-trimming and nano-foglets could create new hairstyles on demand. Robots are already available for lawn-mowing upkeep (Robomow). Telemedicine could be used for medical diagnostics and treatments. Artificial Intelligences (AIs) may be consulted for tax and stock advice.

Over time, public services such as police and fire protection could be provided by trusted AI networks and other mechanisms. Wireless sensor networks and cams may shift the nature of crime and policing activity. Future building materials may be impervious to fire and possibly self-reconstruct following earthquakes or other damage.

New virtual and other non-traditional services requiring intelligent attention from AIs or human minds, particularly in providing entertainment, learning and means of interesting and productive engagement, will probably be a growth area. The future economy will likely be transacted with multiple currencies, a variety of monetary currencies and additional supplementary currencies such as time, attention, intention, reputation and ideas.

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Future of market mechanisms

Information is increasingly free. This is causing well-established economic paradigms to reshape, expand and be supplemented to reflect this shift. One example of a new market norm is the open-source software model of free software and fee-based services to implement and maintain the software.

Free access to information pushes the bottleneck higher up the scale to a less entropic, higher resolution value point. What is now valuable is how information is used, and the creation of new information.

Value Creation
An increasing level of productive activity is coming from the many activities people do that have value but are unrelated to their compensated activities. This productive activity is starting to impact and deliver value to others in unprecedented ways. It has not been measured and is outside of the traditional economy. How can these activities be explicitly valued and exchanged via monetary or non-monetary currencies?

Complementary Market Mechanisms
Non-monetary currencies for attributing value initially started with reputation. Now they are becoming more rigorous in their assessment of value and are being used for exchange. Some of the new market mechanisms include attention economies, open money (related event: unMoney Convergence), time banks, social capital markets (related event: Social Capital Markets), open capital and prediction markets.

Transition to a post-scarcity economy (PSE)
A rich pathway to the future involves creating a multi-currency culture to support the different areas in which value is and will be created: finance, ideas, time, information, action, etc. Financial or non-monetary derivatives could be created on top of the new currencies. Imagine a call spread on community cleanup time!

Having multiple currencies would not only reflect the current and near-future state of the world more accurately but would also be good defensive positioning for future volatility and uncertainty regarding technological development and adoption.

Evolving to a multi-currency culture could ease any potential future transition to a post-scarcity economy (PSE) as traditional money will be only one recognized store of value.

Upload world science fiction

It is strange that there has not been more in-depth exploration in science fiction about what mind upload societies would be like. A few aspects are examined in books like Accelerando, the Golden Age, Permutation City, Diaspora and the Cassini Division. Many issues could play out in fun ways in science fiction.

Trust in an upload world
In a world where everyone has uploaded their minds into computer banks and experience is simulated in virtual reality, what is real? How will checks and balances be established for trust and security? How do you know you are not being hacked? How do you know you are getting the bandwidth and processing power promised by your service provider? If you instantiated into an embodied form to go off-bank to check, how would you know that this has really occurred and is not a simulation of an embodied download by the service provider?

A science fiction story could revolve around escaping the upload service provider, finding its deviance (it has shockingly slaved entire banks of human minds to its own nefarious purposes) and overthrowing it to restore order only to find an even more evil system, like a spam-protection unit gone awry with emerging AI, now has the upload society in its clutches. The discrimination practices of the future could be delivering slower run-time environments to certain groups. The thematic issues to examine are the integrity, influence and control of an upload society.

Motivation and activity
What is the nature of being in an upload world? Is the construct of the individual still relevant? What are the driving motivations? What are the activities? What do minds do with 24 hours of run-time each day? If individuals can make copies of themselves, what are the legal and practical issues? How can constructive behavior be incentivized instead of regulated? An interesting story could ensue as an extension to the Kiln People concept, where a copy of a person mutates and wants to kill the original to assume its legal status. An interesting branch of future law may deal with copies interaction.

Societal dynamics
It could be interesting to look at how society redesigns and reorganizes itself in an upload world. Different subgroups may edit their utility functions in different ways. What are the reproduction norms? Do types of gender proliferate? Which memeplexes would arise and predominate? In the Post-Scarcity Economy, what will be organizing factors for society?

Information evolution
How do the Internet and the individual and the group evolve? In one interpretation, they are all just collections of information. Does distinction become meaningless at some point? Are there other distinctions that would be more relevant in an upload world? What establishes who owns, controls and has permission to view and create different information, whether people bits or data bits?

Civilized transition to the post-scarcity economy

Contemplating a new era of bountiful resources compared to previous times, some call for a socialist, or equal, distribution of the new resources. Two examples of new eras would be those triggered by the advent of the molecular assembler and uploaded human minds; the resources would be, respectively, Earth and Solar System matter and processing capacity.

A socialist resource allocation is moot because:

1. At t+1 or t+n, there will have been a reallocation of resources based on individual skill, utility and Darwinism,
2. Capitalist forces will figure out how to attain more of the resources in other ways,
3. Ways of enforcing a socialist resource distribution will probably not exist or be desirable, and
4. Market mechanisms are likely to provide the most effective resource distribution.

Much more important than which post-scarcity economy resource allocation model to use is how to engender a smooth transition to the new era.

Presumably the rule of law will persist and the critical part will be adapting it to extend and protect rights in the new eras. What is going to happen when someone erects a Dyson sphere around newly terraformed Mars homesteads and starts levying a toll on IP traffic and physical egress? Law seems to be the most stable profession in the face of accelerating technology and new eras!

Absent UN AI Peacekeeping Forces, there should be a way to design incentives backed by consequences and force if necessary to reduce the claim-jumping, lawlessness and vigilanteism (its new guise: nano-weaponry arms races!) that has accompanied historical landgrabs.


Reference:
At the end of “Engine of Creation,” Eric Drexler discusses “Inheritance Day,” a time for “distributing ownership of the resources of space” in three possible scenarios:

1. (capitalist) First-come first-served, a landgrab as homesteading and mining claims have occurred traditionally. Dismissed since the first one to arrive with an appropriate molecular compiler could to re-work and thus claim as far as it could reach in the universe,
   
2. (socialist) Equal distribution and recalibration over time, and
   
3. (socialist) One-time equal distribution – the libertarian and most preferable approach

Long-term impact of the molecular assembler

As described in Molecular Assembler Adoption and Molecular Assembler Impact on Society, while the initial roll-out of molecular assemblers may be the usual multi-year S-curve of technology adoption followed by a period of slow social change for adjustment to the widespread presence of molecular assemblers, at some point, social and political change will likely become more radical.

'God assembler'
The initial simple molecular assemblers may only be able to provide for basic survival needs but would presumably give way to ‘god machine’ assemblers that could produce health diagnostics and remedies, nanotechnology, sophisticated electronics including self-aware robots and any other required or requested objects of the time, as well as recycle unwanted material.

Societal organization
Right now society is organized around a variety of cultural groupings: family, education, work, interests (hobbies, religion, sports, alumni, community activity), and per political and geographical boundaries. With molecular assemblers, virtual reality and nanotechnology, there is no reason for these traditional groupings to persist. The work imperative dissolves. Political and geographical boundaries may become meaningless. Anywhere interaction occurs, virtual reality environments will be indistinguishable from physical reality and perhaps preferable in many ways.

In a mature molecular assembler society, what happens to the basis of physical location?
Existing land would still be somewhat scarce, but it might be possible to create additional land or stable novel residential structures in oceans, rivers and bays. For example, the Pacific Garbage Patch could be collected into a foundation for a vacation destination and a transportation, trade and conference hub between the U.S. and Asia (“The PGP Convention and Visitors Center is pleased to host CES 2020”).

Molecular assemblers and super strong nano structures could create much denser comfortable habitation on existing land (kilometer high skyscrapers) allowing existing and new cities to flourish and grow. The improved technology could also be used to easily build and inhabit many more environments. Removing physical proximity requirements for work, education and activities would allow people to fan out across the globe and eventually into space.

Molecular assembler impact on society

A recent post postulated that molecular assembler adoption is not likely to be an overnight roll-out, but more like the S-curve uptake of any technology product (TiVo, iPod, etc.) due as usual to cost, availability (particularly of element canister refills) and application.

Once molecular assembler roll-out starts, how is it likely to impact society?

It is assumed that all items necessary for survival can be made with the molecular assembler: food, shelter, basic medicines, etc.

Does this mean everyone will immediately quit their jobs and the world will turn to chaos?

No. While survival basics will be available from the molecular assembler in its initial form, many items and premium versions of basic items will not. Like the S-curve of assembler roll-out and adoption, the capability of what can be manufactured is also likely to grow over time. Businesses (Ponoko is a current example) and communities will arise to provide product designs for sale and share via the Internet. Expansion cartridges with elements other than the basic CHON stream (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen) may be added or available at a community level for the construction of more exotic items.

How will the structure and activity of society change?

In the first phase, persisting for perhaps five years, society's structure and activity will slowly start changing. The norm is likely that people will continue to work for several reasons discussed below and that together with the static availability of land and locations of schools and universities will probably keep people organized around their traditional activities and groupings for some time.

• The post-scarcity economy (PSE) has not yet been fully realized. Many things must still be purchased: premium items, services, content, entertainment, non-assemblable items, designs and inputs for assemblable items, land
  
• Habit, risk aversion (unclear how the new phenomenon will unfold and whether it will persist), maintaining status quo while creating future plans, emotional reasons (static comfort in the face of great change)
  
• Work is a venue for garnering status, participating, engaging in productive activity, actualizing
  

In fact, professional focus, activities and responsibilities will be shifting in interesting ways to accommodate, create and take advantage of the new ways of controlling matter. The molecular assembler industry will spawn many businesses from the manufacture and distribution of assemblers to element canister supply to design creation and implementation. Information economy businesses will be impacted and all matter based businesses will need on-site reinvention. The service sectors of the economy will explode as even if basic materials become free, if AI and robotics have not evolved similarly, labor will not.

Molecular assembler adoption

What would the technology adoption curve for the molecular assembler look like? A molecular assembler is a home appliance which would sit on a countertop supplied by water, element canisters and electricity and make items on demand such as food, clothing or other objects personally created or generated from designs found on the Internet.

Molecular Assembler, e-Drexler.com

As with other technologies like the personal computer, cell phone, Internet, TIVO/DVR, iPod, etc., there would likely be a gap between launch and widespread adoption. Not everyone wants to or can be an early adopter. People watch new technologies as their friends and other people buy and use them; they assess the price point for value and killer app-ability and adopt when it becomes personally relevant and possible. Although the time curves are increasingly compressed, it is still taking a few years for technologies to reach mainstream penetration.

Theoretically, the molecular assembler adoption curve could be much quicker than with other technologies because the dream of a machine that can make anything is of course that it can make copies of itself so that everyone can have one. While this may be the ultimate result, it is unlikely in the first phase since the intricate nanoscale molecular machinery components of the molecular assembler will need to be manufactured and assembled at special nanotechnology facilities. The first molecular assemblers will likely quite expensive.

Even when molecular assemblers can be manufactured or copied with ease, the supply canisters need to be considered. The element cartridges for the main CHON stream, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, plus specialty element cartridges are conceptually similar to laser printer ink cartridges. The element cartridges will need to be manufactured and distributed (e.g.; head over to Fry’s for a hydrogen cartridge) or there will need to be local refilling stations, possible via the existing gas or food distribution channels. Eventually, there could be utility feeds into communities or houses with measured usage.

Governments, having every interest in a stable transition to the molecular assembler and the post-scarcity economy (PSE), would likely regulate or otherwise attempt to control the distribution and refilling of element cartridges and possibly the assemblers themselves. Providing assemblers and element cartridges would be big business, attracting corporate and entrepreneurial activity to find effective ways to supply the demand.

Another factor inhibiting the immediate widespread adoption of molecular assemblers would be the need to have a fully developed value chain or offering ecosystem, particularly having some sort of recycling mechanism for unwanted or waste material from the assembler.

In summary, the factors influencing molecular assembler adoption would be like those of any technology adoption: cost, availability and application.

Humanity transcends material wealth

Another chapter in the broad theme of "an idea whose time has come" is the interesting element of social coercion in behavior influencing. It is now not politically correct or even socially acceptable to smoke, drink heavily, eat fatty foods or to have poor posture in most professional and social settings. It is becoming less acceptable to just have a job and hobbies, rather than a direction and mission.

There is of course, regional seepage to this cultural phenomenon; the ideas generally begin, intentionally or not, in California and other clean living, high actualization environments and pervade other urban areas and even extend slow fingers out from cities. Witness anti-tobacco lawsuits superseded by anti-fast food and anti-trans fat lawsuits. The interesting aspect is that behaviors we have known for years to be unhealthy sat untransformed until the eye of social disapproval turned to them. While social disapproval can be seen as an invitation for anti-conformist counterbalance when it pertains to ideas, maybe it is all right when it pertains to statistically supported facts that enhance human life, especially those that hit low on the Maslow hierarchy.

It is increasingly unacceptable to show material trappings or any other sign of success. Indeed, pecuniary interests matter less and less, both directly and as a proxy for success. The brain - ideas, creativity, innovation and skill flexibility and acquisition - is the new currency of success, and it is measured intangibly. The impact is an increasingly interconnected actualizing civilization cleanly focused on true progress, ensconced in the true freedom of ideas.