I’m reading this book now and if your looking for a great book about a nanotechnology ‘what if’, this is it. The idea of a feeder line of raw material coming into your home like water or electricity is today is very cool concept. Need a basic meal? Punch it into the matter converter and you get it. Need some clothing? Same thing. When your finished with it, toss it into the decompiler and its gone, back into the feed. I’m assuming that you would get a matter credit, like making your own power and selling it back to the electricity company. Because the items created in the MC are tagged, only those things can be decompiled back into its basic components. Stephenson is a brilliant man. His ‘tribe’ idea is fascinating, I wonder if such a thing could actually happen in this world. I suspect that many other base things would have to also happen before society would form nodes such as these.
The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson