In 2023 the value of physical products comes from many sources, especially raw materials, manufacturing labor, factory machine time, energy costs, and transportation. But convergent innovations will be dramatically reducing most of those costs in the coming decades. Raw materials will be cheaper to extract or synthesize with automation, robotics will replace expensive human labor, high-priced factory machines will themselves become cheaper, energy prices will fall due to better solar photovoltaics and energy storage (and eventually fusion), and autonomous electric vehicles will drive down
In 2023 the value of physical products comes from many sources, especially raw materials, manufacturing labor, factory machine time, energy costs, and transportation. But convergent innovations will be dramatically reducing most of those costs in the coming decades. Raw materials will be cheaper to extract or synthesize with automation, robotics will replace expensive human labor, high-priced factory machines will themselves become cheaper, energy prices will fall due to better solar photovoltaics and energy storage (and eventually fusion), and autonomous electric vehicles will drive down transportation costs. As all these components of value become less expensive, the proportional value of the information contained in products will increase. Indeed, we are already going in that direction, as the “information content” of most products is rapidly increasing—and will ultimately get very close to 100 percent of their value. In many cases, this will make products cheap enough that they can be free to consumers. Again, we can look to the digital economy to see how this has already played out. As discussed in chapter 5, platforms like Google and Facebook spend billions of dollars on their infrastructure, but the average cost per search or per Like is so low that it makes more sense to make them totally free for users—with other revenue sources like ads being used to make money. In a similar way, it’s possible to imagine a future where people watch political ads or share personal...
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data in order to get free nano-manufactured products. Governments might also offer such products as incentives for volunteer service, continuing education, or maintaining healthy habits." Kurzweil drops the facade and goes full Black Mirror, hahaha.
