|
|
|
|
|
|
by HeyLaughingBoy
5260 days ago
|
|
|
The 3D printer is just a manufacturing method. The scarcity problem will still exist in the form of raw materials -- somebody's got to pay for it. Information is a completely different animal. If there were actual physical costs to the person downloading copyrighted material illegally, do you think the RIAA and MPAA would be as agitated as they are? |
|
|
We (as in, the face of the Earth) receive 1.7E17 J of energy from the sun every second. That's 53.6E23 J of energy per year.
Worldwide energy consumption as of 2008 was 4.74E20 J. It's risen a bit since (thanks China!), but not by more than an order of magnitude. So that means we're receiving enough energy from the sun to power today's civilisation a hundred times over. And that's just the energy which lands on the face of the Earth.
My point is, really, that energy (and hence matter) is quite plentiful if you know how to make efficient use of it. By the time we have cornucopia devices, we'll probably have the technology so that accumulating the energy/matter for making a car is just a question of leaving it outside in the sun/rain/air for long enough and/or dumping a bunch of dirt into it.