The entire concept of “work” might change. As recently as 150 years ago, for 90% of us, work meant growing your own food and maintaining the land you grew it on and the animals that lived with you. People did not even dream of professions like “airline pilot”, “auto mechanic” or “software engineer”.
With automated farms and 3D printers, I suspect that a lot of people will be free to choose to follow their joy, whether that is creating books and art, research, athletic competition and coaching, entertainment, etc. There will also be a lot of people needed to keep nanos and robots working, supervising automated activities, pushing medical and science technology further, and designing the next “toy”. I’m sort of bummed that I will not be around to see it, unless the medical researchers step up their game a little quicker.
Certain scientists are right now hard at work, trying to figure out how to ‘download an individual’s brain’ into a software program that can later be uploaded into a ‘fresh and barely used’ cloned body. Johnny Depp just had a movie that imagine the first part, of the dead man’s mind and temperment being downloaded and ‘contained’ in certain computer systems.
As always happens in fantasy, the first miracle was not enough, Johnny’s ‘contained’ character became greedy, wanted to absorb more and more energy from around him. Even if that meant electric grids people needed to stay alive. It was just a story, but an intriquing concept, whose time may come far sooner than we are ready to manage it.
I, for one, have no desire to ‘live forever’, no thank you!