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Right, I don't get what atoms have to do with it at all. Today, I can buy an iPhone for $1000 that's a phone, camera, encyclopedia, game console and more and mo
by schnable 5y ago
Right, I don't get what atoms have to do with it at all. Today, I can buy an iPhone for $1000 that's a phone, camera, encyclopedia, game console and more and more. Just 30 years ago this would have required a lot more atoms (including energy input, I suspect) and a lot more money.
- syops 5y agoI’m guessing here but it seems to me the idea is that each atom can hold a finite amount of information and information storage requires energy. An economy requires information and storage of information (not necessarily permanently for each transaction). So it seems to me that the ‘economy’ is limited in size by being proportional to the number of atoms we’ll be able to have access to.
- loeg 5y agoThere are about 48 million atoms per 18 grams of water.
- lordnacho 5y agoSurely an underestimate? Avogadro's number is something like 6x10e23 IIRC.
- sigio 5y agoMajor underestimate, it's more like 1.8 * 10^24 or, if you prefer, 1.8 million billion billion.... See: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=atoms+in+a+18+grams+of+water https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=atoms+in+a+18+grams+of...
- loeg 5y agoYeah, sorry, I screwed up. 10^23 != 2^23... We're not running short of atoms.
- jeremyjh 5y agoSo do you think we'll have the technology someday (pretty soon actually) to build all the smartphones on earth with less than one atom?
- dTal 5y agoConsider Jevon's Paradox. Yes, we're more efficient at turning materials into products, but that just means we do it more, and the net consumption goes up. Did you replace your camera, encyclopedia, game console etc every few years, 30 years ago? Do you think we're mining less?
- schnable 5y agoHadn't heard of Jevon's Paradox - thanks.