No one has ever predicted the future, just set paths for possibilities.
Infinite abundance is the inverse if infinite scarcity. We have elements of that now with "why bother to work when you ask for it and it simply comes to you ... will we have [a percentage] of human society that are permanent parasites?"
We already do, it's called government! m/r
What comes to my mind is the famous Pogo cartoon where the little ‘possum says “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Do you remember the line from the next panel in that strip? Hardly anybody does.
“We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity.”
The nanotech replicators are coming! ~ I, Cringely
That’s physicist Michio Kaku talking about the upsides, downsides, insides and outsides of having a replicator like on Star Trek to make anything we’d ever need or want. It’s a compelling vision and he’s right that its implications go far beyond the economic to include cultural, social, even psychological. Kaku says it’s possible to make such a device and suggests we’ll have it in 100 years.
I say we’ll have it in 20.A longtime friend of mine has significant pieces of a replicator functioning in his lab right now. He’s no mad scientist but a respected engineer who is known for his broad technical interests. Right now he can’t make you a mug of Earl Grey (hot), but he can lay down in nanoseconds trillions of atoms of any abundant element, placing those atoms not just in perfect rows, but also placing them in intricate patterns with other atoms to create familiar combinations as well as new materials the world has never seen before.
He is already creating new materials with unique properties that couldn’t exist before simply because no materials have ever been built by men or women to such precision.
Except they have been built to such precision...
-go to link-