Carried over from Current Events...
I was really using Star Trek as a jumping-off place for pondering how radical advances in technology might change the basis of economics.
Understood. And one point I was making is that we are, to a certain extent, already there. I have studied the history of capitalism and economics, and the radical changes made to the life of the average person just by the introduction of mass production are amazing in themselves. Modern liberal rewriting of the industrial revolution focuses on foul factories, and people toiling at assembly lines. Forgotten are the onerous tasks these same people, and their children, were toiling at before the factories were there. And after the revolution, these people could now purchase things that only the rich used to have.
One minor example: A few hundred years ago, if you wanted soap, you collected fat and ashes and made it. An afternoon's work, maybe. And not the finest soap in the world either. I've used it. My grandparents used to make it for certain specific laundry uses (it is superb at removing poison ivy oils, and we were forced to bathe with it after a trip in the woods).
Now, I go into a store down the road, and there is an entire AISLE full of soap, no two alike. I pick it up, and pay for it. Even if I made minimum wage, the soap costs me the equivalent of about ten minutes' work.
Apply this to about any human need. We live in a marvelous world.
Like I said, three hundred years from now, there may be luxuries we would never imagine. To use a silly example, how about disposable automobiles? Pick one up at a shop, and when it needs serious servicing in a few months, it gets recycled, and you get a new one.
Sounds outlandish, doesn't it?
But when I was at 3M many years ago, and designing copy machines, I would never have imagined a copy machine where the photodrum and essential highly-complex works actually became a consumable. Thirty years ago I would probably not have imagined disposable flash cameras coming out of vending machines. I sure as hell would not have imagined wireless telephones, reserved for the very rich, coming out of vending machines. I would not have imagined working scientific multifunction calculators on key chains, hundreds of television channels, or being able to buy my favorite movie to watch any time I want. On a weird, shiny rainbow disk, no less.
And I would not have imagined a computer for $1,000 (in 2003 dollars), sitting on my desk, that was hundreds of times as powerful as machines like this one:
The IBM 370, circa 1970. From the blurb:
...To store its data and instructions, the new IBM System/370 Model 145 uses silicon memory chips, rather than the magnetic core technology that has been the mainstay of computer memories for the past 15 years. More than 1,400 microscopic circuit elements are etched onto each one-eighth-inch-square chip.
...One of the key advantages of the Model 145 for multiprogramming and data base applications is its ability to use IBM's newest and fastest disk storage devices. They include the IBM 3330, announced in June, and a new disk storage facility, the IBM 2319, announced today. The 2319, available only with the Model 145, has a capacity of 87-million characters of information, expandable to 233-million.
...In conventional memories, data is stored in magnetically charged cores strung on wires. The use of monolithic memory technology, with its very high circuit density, allows IBM to offer Model 145 users more than a half-million characters of high-speed storage in about half the space that would be required by core planes for an equivalent amount of memory. The more than 1,400 circuit elements on each monolithic chip are interconnected to make up 174 complete memory circuits.
...The console operator can load instructions from the disk cartridge into RCS in about 45 seconds. The standard 32,000 characters of control storage provided with each Model 145 can be expanded to 64,000 by using a portion of main memory, if needed, to accommodate optionally available functions.
...Monthly rental [!!!] for typical configurations of IBM System/370 Model 145 will range from about $14,950 (with 112,000 characters of main memory) to $37,330 (512,000 characters), with purchase prices ranging from about $705,775 to $1,783,000. Initial customer shipments will be scheduled for late next summer.
And that's 1970 dollars, folks. Multiply by about 4.5 to get 2001 dollars.