Dyson's Industrial Development Kit

[Matt Maier]

I thought this group would be interested in seeing this old thought experiment of Freeman J Dyson's.It's in the book Distrubing the Universe, specifically the Thought Experiments chapter. It parallels OSE's Civlization Starter Kit idea.

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=RHzoMeU2bxsC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=desert&f=false

 

"The RUR company places on the market an Industrial Development Kit, designed for the needs of developing countries. For a small down payment, a country can buy an egg machine which will mature within a few years into a complete system of basic industries together with the associated transportation and communication networks...I do not pretend to know what the possibility of such rapid development of industries and reconstruction of cities would do to human values and institutions. "

 

He doesn't spend much time on the idea, and it's part of a larger discussion of von Neumann's ideas about self-replicating automata, but the core idea is there. What I find most interesting is that he immediately jumpes from the idea that it might be easy to create new industries from scratch to the idea that human culture will be drastically changed, probably involving a lot more room for leisure.

[Marcin Jakubowski]

Very interesting. We should talk to him if he has other thoughts.

Marcin