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but on a much grander scale of productivity and comfort than our pioneer ancestors could have imagined.

Say good-bye to fishing, farming, mining, manufacturing, almost all trade in physical goods, and almost all existing information businesses, unless you enjoy indulging in those kinds of activities as a hobby. As nanotechnology takes over more and more of the production of goods and services (very) locally, starting with the easiest and moving towards the most complex, and as it minimizes and eases the need to engage in administrative work (filing reports on shipping, production, managing budgets and payroll, as well as supervising the work of subordinates), work itself will either disappear or become so completely redefined it essentially becomes something wholly new, perhaps something like play.

So, what will we do with all our free time? What does the 800-pound gorilla do? Whatever he wants. We'll do fun stuff, in whatever way each of us defines that term. Imagine a society so individualistic and wealthy it makes present-day America seem positively medieval by comparison!

Governments will radically downsize as they find most of their duties and obligations subsumed by strong, independent individuals and families running small nanotech businesses or living high off the hog in nanotech subsistence home-based economies.

Say good-bye to welfare, Social Security, social work of every kind, health care (as nanobots are put to work preserving our health and youth on a cellular level), formal education (I predict that home schooling will become ubiquitous. Why send the youngsters to school when they can learn everything they need to know and are interested in learning in highly individualized settings at home?), and government subsidies of all kinds. Almost all of the entities now receiving subsidies will have been made technologically obsolete and would have folded by then. How many corporations will survive the nanotech tsunami of change? Not many, if any.

Most regulatory agencies, too, will become obsolete. The only type of regulation that could possibly work in the very small and fast, fast, fast realm of nanotech is regulation crafted and enforced by nanotech itself.

What about the bread and butter of government contract work the construction and maintenance of transportation and communications infrastructure? At some point during the nanotechnology revolution, that activity too would be subsumed by the assemblers. Imagine busy assemblers rebuilding every road

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