Imagine a device that could create something out of nothing. You walk up to the device, give it your order and bang…a few seconds or minutes later, the thing you wanted sits before you, ready to take. A new shirt? No problem. A book? Poof. A cup of coffee? Right away, sir. A new iPhone? As you like. All it takes is a power outlet and the device knowing how to make the thing.
That’s the replicator from Star Trek.
Oh, I know—there must be limits, right? Nothing bigger than a breadbox, say, or nothing human (though the Star Trek transporter is basically another replicator, isn’t it? It stores a digital copy of you and can reconstitute it at a different location—and since it’s digital, it could create thousands of you instantly).
There was a time when I thought often about what I came to call The Replicator Problem. And my main thought was: it would be a disaster.
Imagine for a moment that someone—a couple of guys in a garage, a startup, a large research corporation—invents the device. It passes all tests, works flawlessly. All it needs is a wall socket and a modest amount of electricity. It can be manufactured inexpensively. There’s some exotic math and esoteric science involved but yes—it works. Even the creators are shocked?
What would happen? The first thing that inventor might do is build a larger one, and have it start creating copies of itself. 24 hours a day, every day, nonstop. Within a week, the inventor has thousands of them. Then what?
The inventor would almost certainly keep it a secret. Patent it, hoard it, find a way to make it a black box that nobody could…duplicate. An inhibitor that prevented it from replicating itself.
If it were a corporation, they might sell units to the highest bidder, or make a deal with the government (although the government may have already swooped in and put it under wraps).
Consumer? They’d pay anything. A device that makes anything you want (with some limits)? Plug it in, turn it on, and—begin. Groceries? Done. Clothes? Whatever you like. A kitchen appliance? Sure. A laptop, a phone, a new part for your car? Easy.
Homes would be mortgaged. Units would be sold for ungodly sums. A black market would appear almost immediately. Economies would collapse in a matter of months. A secondary market of storage buildings just to hold all the stuff that got made would explode. People’s houses would be stuffed full of everything they wanted.
Before long, there’d be a division between the haves and have-nots. Too poor to afford one of those fabulously expensive units? No problem! Middlemen are willing to help you find indentured servitude contracts where you get access to a machine once a week for 10 minutes. Or if you sign a lifetime indenture contract, you might even be able to lease a low-power unit!
The entire world —societies, economies, families, industries—would reorganize around this invention. It would be the center of everything. Controlling access to it would cause wars.
You can probably guess the end, of course—barring some sort of cosmic crisis that reveals the material to make all that stuff came from an alternative universe full of (now pissed off) aliens. Humans would be like overfed, overstimulated rats who’d pushed the food pellet dispenser until their cages and bodies were engorged and unable to move.
But maybe amongst all those people gorging themselves, someone would realize that human life was never about consumption; it was about creation. What we make, who we make it with. About finding ways to put something into the world, rather than finding ever-better ways to take from it.