Here’s a scenario for you: your daily life revolves
completely around bettering yourself and those close to you. You have no need for work, because money is
non-existent. The value we place on
material possessions is completely absent from society, thereby making the idea
of working for a paycheck obsolete. You
may still go to a “job”, but you do so in order to improve yourself in areas
like education, experience, physical fitness, camaraderie, or any number of
reasons other than fattening your now non-existent wallet.
I’m joking, right?
It’s hard to imagine a society where money doesn’t
exist. Really, if making more moolah
wasn’t important, who would wait our tables and flip our burgers? Who would stock the shelves of grocery stores? Money is the deciding factor in everything. People work to make money to buy things.
Fans of Star Trek will know that the futuristic societies
portrayed in those stories have evolved past the use of money. Their drive and ambition is, instead, to
further themselves and achieve more. The
idea is altruistic and refreshing, yet for us it seems millennia away.
Not so fast. Fans of
Star Trek will also recognize the term “replicator”, which is a machine that
can create food and supplies out of atoms and molecules. A person walks up to the replicator, asks for
a hot cup of coffee or a slice of pepperoni pizza, and voila it appears before
them ready to eat. Again, this is the
stuff of science fiction…but really, it’s not. It's modern science and engineering.
I’ve been hearing more and more about 3D printers making their
way into the public eye. These printers
can manufacture three dimensional plastic objects out of specifications
supplied by the user. In other words, if
I wanted a pen to write with, I could program the printer to create a plastic casing
for a pen, and it would “print” that casing.
I’d still have to acquire the ink and ballpoint features, but the bulk
of my object has been created for me.
Just last week I read an article about people building the
casings of assault rifles using 3D printers.
On the popular television show The
Big Bang Theory, Howard and Raj create action figures of themselves using a
3D printer. These things do exist, and
they are becoming more and more prevalent.
I’ll admit that building simple plastic pieces and models is
a far cry from generating a steaming cup of tea from molecules, but some
engineers have gotten a lot closer than those 3D printing machines available
commercially. Below is an interesting
article from a few months ago summarizing the author’s friend and his attempts
to construct a replicator in his lab.
Interesting stuff.
Brings to mind the ideas I conjured up in my first novel, ProjectUtopia.
But where am I going with all of this? Well, imagine being able to dispense food in
seconds or even minutes from a machine in your home. You would never need to go to the grocery
store. You could ask for ingredients
like flour or turmeric or whatever to make your own dish, or you could just
program the dish itself into the replicator.
Why ever go to a restaurant? For
the intimate, dining out experience?
Well, restaurants would have replicators as well. You just punch in your order, it materializes
on the table, and when you leave it recycles the remaining bits of food and
even the dinnerware and utensils back into molecules and atoms that would be
used for the next customer.
So if you are no longer paying for your food, what would you
do with your money? Buy new
clothes? Why not just replicate them as
well? Buy an 80 inch TV? Replicate that. Buy a car or a house? No, just replicate them.
Suddenly the things we prize, those material possessions we
all covet, are all suddenly worthless.
Your neighbor has a bigger house or a green lawn? Replicate a new addition or new grass seed or
whatever. You want a fancy watch? Replicate it.
We’d still need electricity and heat and utilities,
right? Well, if a replicator can create
food and clothing and electronics, it surely could create photons, and it most
certainly could generate energy.
So what would we do with ourselves if we had all of these
things available to us at the push of a button?
I’m sure some of us would become incredibly lazy, but I also think a bit
of Darwinism would set in. Most people couldn't just sit around doing nothing forever. Humans like
to compete with one another, it’s ingrained in our DNA, and so you’d see a lot
more sports and creativity in the world.
In other words, most of us would strive toward improving our minds and
our bodies.
Yes, there'd still be work to do, but eventually work would become more like a hobby. Doctors would still be necessary, but the idea of paying them with money would be silly because they could just replicate everything they'd ever need. So why would anyone even go to medical school, you might ask? For the challenge. To better oneself. To help others.
And I'm sure there would still be some mundane jobs like plowing snow or cleaning public places, but people would do those things for camaraderie. And nobody likes messes. Yes, you'd probably have people who would shun the new system and intentionally cause problems, but if everyone is striving to be smarter or stronger or whatever the case may be, I think you'd see a lot less crime.
I know, I know, this all seems like the far-fetched
ramblings of a sci-fi geek. And I’d
agree with you, except that replicators are practically available now. Primitive, yes, but look at the ENIAC when it
was first built in the 40’s. It took up
an entire building and was a fraction of a tiny percentage as powerful
as the cell phone in your pocket right now.
So just imagine where our replicators will be in 70 years?
A world without money? It won't happen overnight, but the possibilities of it happening a few generations from now aren't quite as absurd as you might think.
No comments:
Post a Comment