[ExI] THE MIGHTY ORIGINAL

[Mike Dougherty]

I'm not sure originality matters in the sense of "this thing was
created first" as much as the novelty "this thing is unlike any thing
that preceded it."  It will be difficult to maintain uniqueness in a
nanofabbed world but if the artist sells new works under a
non-disclosure agreement and copies show up everywhere then the artist
may have a legal case against the purchaser.  I doubt even the
singularity will be enough to stop lawyers from making money.

I wonder how exact a copy this supposed nanofab future will produce.
ex:  There is considerable notoriety in the world of 'high fashion'
despite the fact that anyone clever enough to cut cloth and use a
sewing machine could theoretically reproduce those articles worn by
Paris runway models.  Will the owner of the current 'original' Van
Gogh allow it to be scanned to the molecular level to facilitate the
perfect copy?

Until we have the ability to rearrange subatomic particles to
literally create gold, such materials will continue to have a material
worth that could retain inherent value.  Conquistadors hammered
Aztec/Inca gold statues into bricks for easier transport of the raw
metal with no regard for the production items they were destroying.
Those items would be worth far more than their weight in gold if found
today.  If found in the far future, are they again valued only for the
weight of their materials?  I guess if they could be copied to data
and later reproduced at will, there's no inherent value in the item
(assuming the pattern is not lost).  I suppose this necessitates
having the mass converted losslessly to energy and the energy credit
applied to the owner of the converted object.  Even if this wondrous
violation of physics becomes possible, greedy bankers (or politicians)
will take a small fee during the transaction process.

So even with a magical upload of mass to a communal energy pool there
will (likely) be a fee directed to the bank that manages your share of
the pool, there will be lawyers fees for protecting novelty and
uniqueness rights (as well as prosecuting violation of those rights)
and politicians to tax individual's consumption of the communal energy
pool to download items back into physical reality.  This
post-singularity scenario isn't even zero-sum; it's negative sum.