Technological Utopia

	Our civilization, from it's beginning, has lived under scarcity. Scarcity, what exactly is it? In the most basic sense it is a resource that many people need but that there is not enough of to go around. So only some get alot of or everyone gets a little bit of. People tend to compete and struggle for this resourse.
	Can we even think of what a life with no scarcity would be like? Think of the force behind some of our traditions of hard work. If we developed a technology that releived us of this need how would our traditions influence it's implemetation? If we solved the problem of scarcity might we stop the application of it because of the hard times of the past, and the resulting philosophies?
	Isn't the goal of working to releive ourselves of scarcity and to gain the things we need for our suvival? If it were possible to gain these needs from a technological advance would we resist this solution to some of our most vexing social problems? Could we be happy in a situation where we did not have to struggle to get the things that we need to live healthily in the world?
	The world's traditions of work are so deeply embedded in every society that it would seem impossible to convince humans that they need not have to work anymore. Any statement along these lines will bring about a heady skepticism from anyone who has grown up in the current situation. We should prepare ourselves for the solution to these problems.
	A certain principle has revealed itself since the industrial revolution; better machines compete with people for labor positions. Lately these machines work 24 hours a day and don't need breaks. Some economists think that these computers and machines will eventually put everyone out of work. Will this situation increase or decrease scarcity?
	What if the amount of scarcity goes down at the same time that the need for labor does? What if technology advanced to the point that the price of production dropped so quickly that everything became, more or less, free? Most doom and gloom forcasts about the effects of better and better technologies don't take into account that the situation might balance itself out. Progress will not be halted by these types of concerns.
	Once nano-technology and micro-biology burst upon the scene, with their equivalent to the steam engine and the cotton gin, free energy may be everywhere. Once most of our technologies begin their existence as seeds and grow into what we need, the energy we need to survive may end up being as free as the air we breath.
	If food, shelter, and clothing were as free as air, we would be in a truely new situation. Is there a historical precedent, a people or time in the past where working for survival was not required? We are entering new territory here and need to begin to consider how we can continue to work, but not for our survival needs.
	Nearly all past conceptions of utopia include a need to work hard for the things we need to survive. Technological Utopia is somewhat different than traditional notions of Utopia. Things take care of themselves in technological utopia. Traditional utopias get all tangled in economic theories but tech utopia blasts on all these making everything free. Would we turn down one of these free technologies? The answer seems obvious.
	One by one, the things we have had to work for, since the dawn of civlization, will become free. It is imperitive that we account for this possibility and construct a philosophy that can help us deal with these new freedoms when they emerge. These changes will be cumulative and these changes will simply happen; another revolution.
	There are many science fiction stereotypes which portray people who have been releived of their need to labor for their needs. In most such stories people are shown as either crazy, because of a lack of things to do, or they are under some sort of slavery as a price for their physical freedom. These kinds of generalizations will not do if we must move into a world where "by the sweat of our brow" is not needed.
	What if we are not physically and mentally enslaved to the source of the free material? Do we not have at least one myth that will help us transit to such a paradise? Will we look the gift horse in mouth, that gives us our lives, for free? Will we deny these freedoms for the sake of a philosophical system that has worked so far? What would the reasons sound like that would lead us to beleive that we should choose scarcity over abundance?
	Let us step back for a mament from all of these arguments and defenses of a life lived in scarcity. These philosophies make alot of sense but when things become free, one by one, the tenants of scarcity will be cast in a strange light. A light that shows that these defences of depravity are defences of nature's abuse of it's creatures.

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