If you have "strong", Drexler-like nanotech - i.e., assemblers and disasemblers - this scare of upcoming shortage of resources becomes moot, and the need of "ephemeralization" as you call it also tends to disappear. Given strong nanotech it would be for instance very cheap to gather resources elsewhere in the Solar System - asteroid mining seems specially promising. Indeed, even exploration of untapped resources here on Earth, like the possibility ocean mining that you mention, would likely increase available resources by an order of magnitude or so - and that likely requires just "weak" nanotech. (Which I call "materials science on steroids". :)
Personally my attitude toward the cyclical alerts of "OMG! This or that resource is running short! The world is doomed! We are all gonna die!" tends to be skeptical. Basically because this has happened several times in history and what usually happens is, once this or that resource gets more expensive, the pressure for finding alternatives also increases - and so far they were found. On 6/13/07, Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (...)
Unless there are some replacements for certain rare elements...probably not. Ephemeralization is about to become NECESSARY, as the pool of available material resources is shrinking FAST!! (This statement is based on one article, but I found it utterly convincing, as I was expecting that this result would be discovered as soon as someone looked.) So I think the next necessary area of development is MEMs and nano-tech. Assemblers and disassemblers are going to be needed within 20 years. For some elements even sooner. Screens will need to start shrinking rather than growing...plausibly being worn as glasses are now until a direct neural feed becomes available. One good place to start might be solar powered desalinization...and then material recovery from the brine. That's one's difficult, as there's already lots of competition. OTOH, there's an *immense* market if you can get the price down. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
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