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Nanotech: "Smart Fabrics"
Reidar Gunn writes: "This article is about nano technology... I read it over to make sure I was really reading what I read! Red to Blue cloths, sizes going from bigger to smaller... Wonder if they'll make wireless clothes with a subscription service, Yah never know! Logo changing shirts eh!"
The future I fear is one where their is unlimited wealth and resources and limited access for society overall to enjoy them. I'm afraid that every task that a human can perform will eventually be automated away. The only people who will enjoy this scenario are the landed and capital holders who made their fortunes while a human still could. As for the unlanded and non capital holding poor, the future will be to either starve or do the most menial and unrewarding of work, no matter what their abilities or inclinations are. What will happen when the working and middle class are completely irrelevant to the production of the very goods and services they need? In America, cheap foreign slave labor is already giving us a small taste of what automation is going to do to us.
What good will nano-technology do for the poor and middle class when the "Intellectual Property" to make and use it is licensed and locked down? People who are fortunate enough to own land could try living in an efficient and self sufficient manner. The only problem with that being, property taxes demand cold hard cash which you need to be able to provide a good or a service that someone is willing to pay for to acquire it in the first place. So watch as you can't afford to license and activate the nanotech
that you need to generate revenue to keep the property that you are "renting" from the government.
As much as I would like to see a Star Trek scenario of infinite wealth and plenty for everyone, I envision a darker future. I think that things will devolve into more of a state of feudalism where society is stratified into classes of haves and have-nots. Not because there isn't enough wealth to go around either. Rather, the people holding the ability to create wealth will never part with the least bit of any of it to give back to the society that enabled them to become wealthy to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I believe that for the time being there are opportunities for enterprizing individuals who are intelligent and willing to work. It's just that I believe that the capitalistic base of laws that we live under today in regards to real and intellectual property are only going to lead to poverty, oppression, and artificial scarcity in the future. Too bad, it doesn't have to be that way. I hope that nanotech does become an enabling resource to the average person like some other posters have suggested. I'd rather live to see that happen than what I think is going to happen.
I think you have had enough time to read up on all of your revolutionary idea's because of not breaking your back all day plowing some little tract of land. You would be much better off focusing your energy on the more salient dangers of nanotechnology, namely the grey goo scenario where an uncontrolled nano-replication accidently turns all of the Earth into copies of itself.
Moreover, I find your idea of revolution to be a little outmoded, Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution was written under a government that did not allow the right to demonstrate. To take the kernal of the idea into today's realities, consider it in idea space. Convince people it's a better way then vote for them. In old style revolutions things tend to get broken, and I for one do not want my things to get broken.
Go eat your cake.
Maybe you don't get it.
I hate to quote lunatics, but it was Ross Perot that said "We want jobs to make microchips, not potato chips." The idea is that the higher up on the food chain you are, the better the view.
The same is true with knowledge: the more you know about the world, its people and how to control it all, the less shit you are forced to eat. Now, a little excrement is consumed by all, but the people with the knowledge get to say who eats the most. Same with any technology: train our people to use it so they are at the top of the food chain.
Nanotech will be in the hands of those who understand it and can use it. Its benefits will trickle from the haves to the have-nots only if those in the know benefit from it. Capitalism reigns, Trotsky remains dead in Mexico with an axe in the back. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
My brothers and sisters: the only path to freedom it the one you make for yourself. Learn what other people value, use it industriously and bask in the warm glow of capitalism. Let untrained, unwilling to learn, undisaplined people till the soil and turn the screws.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.