WEBVTT 00:00:00.062 --> 00:00:06.189 Throughout human history people have tried to create utopia, the perfect society. 00:00:06.189 --> 00:00:12.073 In fact, America, the American dream, in some sense was based on utopianism.  Why do we 00:00:12.073 --> 00:00:17.094 have the Shaker movement?  Why did we have the Quakers?  Why did we have so many different 00:00:17.094 --> 00:00:25.078 kinds of religious movements that fled Europe looking to create autopia here in the Americas? 00:00:25.078 --> 00:00:32.041 Well, we know the Shakers have disappeared and many of these colonies have also disappeared 00:00:32.041 --> 00:00:37.057 only to be found in footnotes in American textbooks, and the question is why? 00:00:37.057 --> 00:00:44.109 One reason why is scarcity because back then the industrial revolution was still young 00:00:44.109 --> 00:00:51.719 and societies had scarcity.  Scarcity creates conflict and unless you have a way to resolve 00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:57.649 conflict, your colony falls apart.  How do you allocate resources?  Who gets access 00:00:57.649 --> 00:01:02.039 to food when there is a famine?  Who gets shelter when there is a snowstorm and all 00:01:02.039 --> 00:01:08.009 of the sudden you've eaten up your seed corn?  These are questions that faced the early American 00:01:08.009 --> 00:01:13.021 colonists, and that's the reason why we only see the ghost towns of these utopias. 00:01:13.021 --> 00:01:20.036 However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, who knows, maybe 00:01:20.036 --> 00:01:25.046 in 100 years, we'll have something called the replicator.  Now the replicator is something 00:01:25.046 --> 00:01:32.064 you see in Star Trek.  It's called the molecular assembler and it takes ordinary raw materials, 00:01:32.064 --> 00:01:38.018 breaks them up at the atomic level and joins the joints in different ways to create new 00:01:38.018 --> 00:01:45.095 substances.  If you have a molecular assembler, you can turn, for example, a glass into wood 00:01:45.095 --> 00:01:52.036 or vice versa.  You would have the power of a magician, in fact, the power of a god, 00:01:52.036 --> 00:01:58.031 the ability to literally transform the atoms of one substance into another and we see it 00:01:58.031 --> 00:02:03.005 on Star Trek. It's also the most subversive device of all 00:02:03.005 --> 00:02:11.079 because if utopias fail because of scarcity then what happens when you have infinite abundance? 00:02:11.079 --> 00:02:17.909 What happens when you simply ask and it comes to you?  One of my favorite episodes on Star 00:02:17.909 --> 00:02:22.409 Trek is when the Enterprise encounters a space capsule left over from the 20th century, 00:02:22.409 --> 00:02:28.409 the bad 20th century.  People died of all these horrible diseases, and many people froze 00:02:28.409 --> 00:02:34.519 themselves knowing that in the 23rd century or so they'll be thawed out and their diseases 00:02:34.519 --> 00:02:39.079 will be cured.  Well, sure enough, it's the 23rd century now.  The Enterprise finds 00:02:39.079 --> 00:02:44.068 a space capsule and begins to revive all these people and cure them of cancer, cure them 00:02:44.068 --> 00:02:50.084 of incurable genetic diseases, and then one of these individuals, however, was a banker. 00:02:50.084 --> 00:02:57.069 He is revived and he says to himself, “My God, my gamble worked; I'm alive; I'm in the 00:02:57.069 --> 00:03:03.599 23rd century,” and he said, “Call my stock broker; call my banker; I am rich; I 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:09.054 am rich; my investments, they have been sitting there in the bank for centuries; I must be 00:03:09.054 --> 00:03:14.569 a quadrillionaire!”  And then the crew of the Enterprise looks at this man and says, 00:03:14.569 --> 00:03:22.819 ”What is money; what is a bank; what is a stock broker?  We don't have any of these 00:03:22.819 --> 00:03:28.519 in the 23rd century,” and then they say, “If you want something, you simply ask for 00:03:28.519 --> 00:03:36.489 it and you get it.” Now that's subversive.  That's revolutionary 00:03:36.489 --> 00:03:42.043 because if all utopiansocieties vanished because of scarcity and conflict, what happens 00:03:42.043 --> 00:03:48.049 when there is no scarcity?  What happens when you simply ask and you get what you want? 00:03:48.049 --> 00:03:54.076 This has enormous philosophical implications.  For example, why bother to work?  Why bother 00:03:54.076 --> 00:03:58.037 to go to work when you simply ask for things and it comes to you? 00:03:58.037 --> 00:04:04.189 Now, some sociologists think that if drugs, for example, are totally legalized, absolutely 00:04:04.189 --> 00:04:09.015 legalized then maybe three to five percent of the human race will become permanent drug 00:04:09.015 --> 00:04:15.015 addicts.  That's the price for total legalization of drugs.  I don't know, but that's a number 00:04:15.015 --> 00:04:20.005 that people talk about.  What happens when we have this society based on replicators? 00:04:20.005 --> 00:04:25.639 Then will we have three to five percent of the human race become permanent parasites? 00:04:25.639 --> 00:04:31.024 This is a possibility.  The whole nature of the human psyche is based around producing 00:04:31.024 --> 00:04:35.096 things, doing something, making a contribution.  What happens when you don't have to do that 00:04:35.096 --> 00:04:41.072 anymore?  What happens when there is infinite plenty?  What happens if there is a utopia? 00:04:41.072 --> 00:04:45.012 The detractors will say, “Bah-humbug! There 00:04:45.012 --> 00:04:51.449 is no replicator; it violates the laws of physics.”  Well, actually that's not true. 00:04:51.449 --> 00:04:58.087 There actually is a nanobot that can replicate, actually take apart molecules and rearrange 00:04:58.087 --> 00:05:04.037 them in fantastic ways.  Mother Nature has already created it.  It's called the ribosome. 00:05:04.037 --> 00:05:12.031 The ribosome can take hamburgers, milk shakes and turn them into a baby in nine months. 00:05:12.031 --> 00:05:21.043 That is a miracle.  The ribosome takes hamburgers, French fries, potato chips, breaks apart the 00:05:21.043 --> 00:05:28.319 molecules and reassembles them into DNA.  Mother Nature has created the replicator. 00:05:28.319 --> 00:05:33.008 It replicates humans, but what happens when humans create replicators by which we can 00:05:33.008 --> 99:59:59.999 replicate everything?  This is a very subversive idea.