10/26/2009 PERMALINK
The "vob + fab = fob" era There is a fascinating meme that has been circulating among the tech-savvy since Moore's Law became apparent. What happens when the mesh and smart bot devices extend Moore's Law to everything.

From Cory Doctorow's new book "Makers"

The individual startups, given sufficient agility to switch rapidly to new products as returns collapsed on the old ones, could produce enormous ROI compared to traditional industrial investment. The problem is that, despite the astronomical rate of return, the absolute quantities of capital required for such startups was so small; even a million garage shops, if they require only a few grand to get started, will use only a fraction of the capital that used to be invested in conventional industry. So the overwhelming majority of available capital still sat idle without any productive outlet. What’s more, those enormous ROIs were as unstable as a uranium atom; the problem was that with the initial capital outlays required so small, and entry barriers so low, the period of entrepreneurial rents from being first to market kept getting shorter and shorter, until the investors were barely staying ahead of the shock wave of competitive price implosion.

A meme that has grown out of this meme is the idea of a singularity. Where things begin to accelerate so rapidly that even the near term future becomes completely unknowable.

There are today, for example, machines that assemble DNA strands, one molecule at a time.

What will happen when there is a $200 smart bot for your smart phone that includes a gene printer that will let you bang out a bacteria that can turn your household waste into fuel for your car for a pittance?

A bio development of this kind seems just around the corner.

Nano is moving a bit slower, but there is every reason to believe cheap nano printers are also possible in the near future.

When everyone has access to instant wet or dry fab, of what use is capital at that stage?

Would this be a post-capitalism age?

Of what use are institutions like nation states to someone that can make pretty much anything he or she needs cheaply with minimal external inputs required?

It is hard to see a place for industrial age institution like Wall Street and nation states in this sort of future?

I use this formula to think about the shape of things to come:

vob + fab = fob

vob (virtual object - a design put together on the mesh) + fab (fabricators - DNA printers and nano printers) = fob (fabricated object - a real world smart bot device or artificial life-form)

Radical life extension also seems destine to flow from a vob + fab = fob world, where anything, even our own minds and bodies becomes easily hackable.

What will happen to religions when living forever is a practical reality. Not just a promise only obtainable after death, when no refund is possible should the promise prove to only be a priest, minister, mullah or rabbi's self-serving lie.

It seems doubtful that any of the old order's institutions will be able to survive change this extreme. They just weren't designed for anything remotely like the era we have netered.

Some will, of course, continue to believe in the old institutions in a pointless flat earth society sort of way, but their practical utility is likely to fall rapidly towards zero.

What will be needed is more of an informal mesh of problem solving minds, tied together with a mesh of makers equipped with the latest low/no cost (crowd sourced vob and maker fab) nano/bio/mesh smart bot devices and artificial lifeforms.

The Humods Project is an effort to bring this mesh of problem solving maker minds together.