And some of all those important specializations have only a few dozens workers on the whole planet... iirc, he counted the minimum population for a civilizatio

And some of all those important specializations have only a few dozens workers on the whole planet... iirc, he counted the minimum population for a civilization like ours at 100 million. The implications for space explorations are not good. But not even Stross had any real opinions on how this will change with advanced 3D-printing.