[berntb]

>>provide for your needs without depending on a global supply chain.

Hmm... reminds me of a discussion (@Stross' blog) about how many people were needed in a society, to support a technological civilization. Stross argued we would need many millions of people.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic...

(Of course, lots of specialised services can be replaced with less efficient generic ones, but even a minimum of one million people have severe implications for a Mars colony.)

Edit: Clarity

[yk]

The discussion focussed on the entire technological stack; and I do not think that anybody claims that we will be designing and printing comercial airliners from scratch at home. By contrast the maker revolution is (in its first stages) about the long tail of manufactoring. So in the forseeable future it is about beeing able to sell small runs of specialized goods at prices compareable to more generic and mass produced competition. While we still need several million people to produce the arduinos that power them.

[berntb]

The discussion noted all the specialities needed in education. The point I was trying to make is that a maker revolution has a potential to drastically cut down the number of specialized people needed; consider just e.g. logistics. (Not talking about the first stages.)

[yk]

Great point. This could be one of the non obvious social consequences of rapid manufacturing. At least if I think of the IT revolution, then in some sense system programmers replaced a lot different specialties, like delivery boys ( by email), accountants ( at least the half that was double checking the books fifty years ago) and type setters. And in a addition people with domain specific knowledge were enabled to use this knowledge efficiently with computers.

[hosh]

Basic material needs:

Food. Water. Shelter. Air.

Existential needs:

Love, affection, contentment, happiness, connection.

Technology can address the basic needs and can never address existential needs.

Everything else are wants. Wants are endless since they attempt to address existential needs but never actually satisfy them. In that sense, Stross is correct. There will always be more wants than can be supported by any given population size of society; but needs can be supported.

[bcoates]

If you're not young, able, and heterosexual, technology can easily be the difference between isolation and connection.

[berntb]

Uhh... you went of in some weird orthogonal direction. The Stross reference were about the minimum number of people needed for a technological civilization.

(Didn't you read it? Are you defending some belief system as an excuse for being religious? We're just talking past each others?)

(And you're wrong, anyway. without technology and science, we'd still have little time, get sick and die early -- living under tyranny. Not much chance of contentment and happiness when you e.g. see your kids die; it was ~ 30% child mortality before technology/science, depending on where you lived. The point is, industrialisation is a prereq for fulfilling existential needs for most of the population.)

[hosh]

Yeah. I read it. Given the constraint, premise, and assumptions, what Stross says makes sense. It's model that's limited in scope.

I'm not being religious. Satisfaction and contentedness is something you can go verify for yourself by observing yourself.

It is entirely possible for an individual to fulfill existential needs even with the horrors of 30% child mortality rate, but most people can't or don't do that. Technology serves as a great support for this, but it will never actually fulfill those existential needs.

It's my hope that microfab technologies will free up people's time so that they can really look into existential needs.

[derleth]

> Love, affection, contentment, happiness, connection.

Technology has addressed these more than you will ever realize.

As has been said already, technology greatly reduces isolation for anyone who isn't young, healthy, heterosexual, cissexual, and of the majority race in the region they find themselves. The ability to form connections based on mutual interests even when geography is against you is easily the difference between living and dying alone and finding a place where you actually fit.

What's more, the ability to make connections anonymously is essential. Being of the wrong persuasion, whatever that persuasion is, in the wrong environment can be grounds for anything from social ostracism to death. Without the technology to anonymously make connections with others, there are people who would risk death just looking for someone they'd enjoy spending time with.

The only people who think technology can't help with what you call 'existential needs' are the people who are lucky enough to not already know what I just posted. And they are amazingly lucky indeed.

[hosh]

Technology will get you only so far. Really connecting with someone is between you and that person, even if mediated by technology.

Companionship, social relations are not the same as love and affection, though they are related. Love isn't really about mutual interests, though mutual interests can mediate that. Mutual interests make it easier for people to understand and be empathetic with each other, but it is well within human possibility to be empathetic with one another without mutual interests.

I make a big deal of this because, while technology made it easier to connect with other people, I want to make clear that technology is not a replacement for connecting with other people.