[extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Robin Hanson]

I promised Chris Phoenix that I'd post the latest version of my NNI 
conference abstract.

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Five Assumptions Underlying Radical Nanotech Scenarios
Future Economic Scenarios 
Panel
2003 NNI Workshop on Social Implications of Nanoscience/Nanotechnology

Robin Hanson
George Mason University

If we can translate the technical descriptions of possible future nanotech 
abilities into economic terminology, we can use formal economic models to 
study the social implications of nanotech.  We should consider both 
conventional nanotech scenarios and radical ones, such as described in 
Unbounding the Future and Diamond Age.  Radical scenarios seem less likely 
but have more severe social implications.  As a prelude to future modeling 
attempts, I here try to identify five key assumptions to bridge the chasm 
between conventional and radical nanotech scenarios.

1.  Atomic Precision:  Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put some 
atoms where we want.

Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new products 
may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and perhaps medical 
devices that float in our bloodstreams.

2.  General Plants:  General purpose manufacturing plants, using a limited 
range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose plants, like 
general purpose computers have now displaced most special purpose signal 
processors.  (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct manufacturing.")

As with computers, this requires that the efficiencies of special purpose 
devices be overcome by the scale economies and lower design costs of 
general purpose devices.  When transportation costs matter, products would 
likely be made at the general plants nearest to each customer.

3.  Local Production:  Small general plants, located in or near homes, 
dominate manufacturing.

This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, with 
human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to design.  Here 
costs of transportation and labor for manufacturing are mostly eliminated; 
what remain are costs of design, marketing, regulation, feedstocks, and 
rental of general plants.  As with PCs today, open source product design 
and file sharing of stolen product designs could become issues.

4.  Over-Capacity:  Local general plants are so fast/cheap that they are 
usually off, like PCs now.

For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and 
marketing.  Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would dominate 
total costs, as with software and music today.  Like software and cable TV 
companies that now offer a small menu of product packages to 
price-discriminate via anti-correlations in item values, future consumers 
might be offered a few lifestyle packages that cost most of their salary 
and entitle them to designs for clothes, furniture, food, etc.  This would 
require high concentration of or coordination by sellers of consumer good 
designs.

5.  Self-Reproduction:  A local manufacturing plant can create a copy of 
itself within a year.

This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general 
plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and sudden 
cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first develops 
achieves it.  How large an advantage depends on just-prior costs, and how 
sudden depends on self-reproduction time.  Self-reproducing military or 
terrorist weapons become a concern.
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Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323