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I don’t care if all the food tastes like asteroid, I want one.
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Looking around, Audri said, “okay then, let’s start with food. I’ve been noticing these machines everywhere. People go up to them, and the machine doles things out.” Decidedly not excited, Val said, “I don’t think I have any cash or credit cards on me.” Audri waved her along anyway and said, “but I didn’t see any transactions happening. Let’s go look.” The go over to watch a food synth. The first Tithoron who approached it enthusiastically said, “I’d like a flammy sandwich. And a cup of swizz.” The food synth obliged and popped out a sandwich and a travel cup. Another Tithoron with a red shirt approached it and said, “food synth, make me a new shirt. Orange, with thin yellow stripes. Stretchy, long sleeves.” The food synth obliged. Then a small Tithoron approached it and said, “a bag of puceberry lickers please.” This Tith said “please” because it had manners. The food synth popped out a bag of purplish lollipops. Audri than turned to Val and said, “see? I think that swag is free.” Wide-eyed, Val said “whoa. This is better than the cheese section at whole foods.”
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I think that Whole Foods would actually charge one for that cheese.
I’ve never been in a Whole Foods store. I need to check it out sometime this week. As an Amazon Prime member, I should have checked it out a long time ago.
The food synth can make things besides food…
A Twilight Zone episode was about such a machine. The first thing a visitor did was to have it create a weapon!
This has since happened in the real world with 3D printers.
How long before these two do the same?
It didn’t take Dimitri too long to make one, although admittedly that was during that pirate attack.
Yeah, right after posting I remembered someone had done in-universe allready.
Regolith has been said to taste like gunpowder, oddly.
.
“What do we ask for? It’s not like it knows Earth food. We can’t just say, ‘Give me a chorizo burrito’ and it’ll… It’ll…”
“What?”
“It gave me a chorizo burrito.”
I’d strongly advise our adventurers to listen to what others order, and copy that. Although they have no idea what it will taste like, as least it will probably be compatible with their current biology. Who knows if Earth food is?
Chris, your comment makes no sense to me? Am I just having a rough day, already, at 5:21am? Geez.
(Did you get my card?)
“I don’t care if all the fo(od) tastes like as(s), I want one.”
Thank you!
Ha! Sorry, typo. Well I fixed it. You were right with “food,” but “asteroid” was actually correct. 🙂
Hunger, clothing, shelter, the needs that drive creation and the economy. What happens when you take those away? What’s the economy rest on then? Or does the whole idea of creating things for money go away?
Then what happens to art? Aha! I’ve got you!
We don’t really know that this stuff is free, just that no visible transactions occur. It could be that the machine recognizes each user and automatically deducts the cost from their account, for instance.
Take away hunger, clothing, and shelter and I think you’ll find that desire for social prestige is just as powerful, not to mention curiosity. At least among humans it is.
Any of the world’s current billionaires could just retire and never have to worry about any of those three primal needs again for the rest of their lives. And yet… Most of them don’t. And those who do usually still go and do something more noteworthy than relaxing on the beach.
Which is not to be read as promoting socialism or “universal basic income” or any of those ideas. Those don’t solve the scarcity problem for basic necessities, they just trick everyone into thinking that the problem is solved and they don’t need to worry about it anymore… It’s not, like some people assert, a problem of socialist programs removing people’s motivation. It’s a problem of their motivation ending up directed to the wrong pursuits… And then all of a sudden the supermarket shelves are empty (like a party where everyone assumed someone else was bringing the food) and everyone’s left scratching their heads about what happened… You can’t force post-scarcity to happen early without the production infrastructure to make food as cheap as air already in place. And once that infrastructure is in place you won’t need to do anything to make it happen.
“Voyage from Yesteryear”, by James P. Hogan is a well thought-out exploration of what a post-scarcity society might look like. The beginning is a little dry since he was a physicist and loves showing off spaceship designs, but, like most of his books, once the world and its technology is set up the story homes in on the human elements, and you’ll get a reminder about any of the necessary technological details when they become important later.
@Cyyoty I’m pretty sure that they can have Russian Tea Cakes at least a long with whatever everyone else has been ordering on the galactic internet in that neck of the woods.
The one Tithonian we’ve seen so far wearing a shirt, seemingly just to illustrate that the machine can make them.
It’s a fad. Only the younger set wears shirts.
So, as useful as neckties.