It's still a long way off, Sterling said, before one can accurately imitate even a bacterium. But computers are ideal to craft radically new designs in ways that a person would never attempt. Say a company wanted to make a new type of car jack. It could punch in parameters for the device, scan in pictures and data about all existing jacks and let a computer experiment with millions of variations. Computers might also spur the creation of automatic bartering centers, ''paramarket'' entities that we can't even conceive, Sterling said, although he didn't elaborate.
People are dangerous.
He also chastised the executives in the audience for not relaxing more. At a previous speech, Sterling said he was the only audience member who got any down time. Another science fiction creator agreed there may be reason for caution. Andre Bormanis, science consultant to the two current Star Trek television series, said in an interview that he views information technology as having much more potential for liberating people and democratizing society than shackling it. But Bormanis agreed Sterling has some valid concerns about squandering technology, and adds some of his own.