[Age of Reason]

Intelligent people with skills will have the ability to adapt

People keep thinking that.

I understand what is coming.

The only way it won't happen is if civilization first destroys itself in an atomic world war or is destroyed by disease or a collision with an asteroid or the Yellowstone super volcano erupts or we simply run out of energy (our current civilization was made possible by abundant cheap energy).

I see now that left unimpeded, technology will result in the greatest crisis man has faced since the last ice age.

Left unimpeded, there's only a few ways it will turn out: the one most likely is a return to the kind of equality that hunter gatherers enjoyed.

Which was a time when you couldn't be much richer than the next guy, because there wasn't anyplace to store stuff, protect stuff, or move more stuff than you could carry to the next campsite.

It was a time when nobody farmed and most of peoples wants were supplied automatically by nature.

In the future, most of people's wants will be supplied automatically by machines.

Machines will be a kind of artificial nature.

But instead of being limited in how much stuff you can have by how much you can carry on your person, you will be limited by how many ration coupons the government gives you, to trade for those machine made goods. And everyone getting the same meager supply of coupons, we will have much greater income equality than today, just like we had in the days of hunter gathering.

And there will be no way to materially better yourself, no way to work harder or smarter, because there will be no work, except possibly some unpaid volunteer work. Although what form that might take, I have no idea.

[Age of Reason]

We will come to live in a way that reminds me of how my parakeet lived: his needs and wants automatically doled out and his cage cleaned, by his owner. Who once in a while would let him out to fly around for exercise.

And instead of garbling away at our image in a mirror all day, we'll be staring into computer monitors, immersed in some virtual reality to escape the horror of real life in a technology run world.

[Diamond]

Left unimpeded, there's only a few ways it will turn out: the one most likely is a return to the kind of equality that hunter gatherers enjoyed.

Which was a time when you couldn't be much richer than the next guy, because there wasn't anyplace to store stuff, protect stuff, or move more stuff than you could carry to the next campsite.

Sounds like a Barack Obama utopia.

[Carthego delenda est]

“Machines will be a kind of artificial nature.”

3D printers supplied with bins/vats of all elements (and later assemble the elements) could and will create just about anything. Now giving that creation life at whatever level...