> I don't think the tech will play out like in Diamond Age

Well (SPOILER ALERT!!!) the whole point of Diamond Age was that nanotech could play out in one of two ways: metered by a central authority to extract rents vs. imitating natural self-replicating systems. The deeper issue being control vs. wilderness.

That's really a psychological issue, and one we are already facing today: witness how the idea of building self-replicating 3D printers ("RepRap") to alter economic conditions became subsumed by companies trying to sell 3D printers to consumers. Most printers cost between $300 to $3000, when I should be able to go down to Noisebridge and print my own for $10.50. People have to make a living; Noisebridge is soliciting donations because their lease is up and they have to move. Can I really fault the folks trying to make a living selling printers?

Bucky Fuller pointed out that we would have the technology to take care of ourselves by sometime in the 1970's, no nanotech required, if we would just apply our resources and existing technology to our problems in an efficient manner.

> the book I mentioned was indeed 3BP but since I haven't finished the other two books my final thoughts have to wait. (Only thing I didn't like so far was the sudden FTL comms at the end...)

I've only read the first two, has the third been released in paperback yet? As for the FTL comms, I think it's really hard to make a hard-sci-fi story that's realistic and emotionally engaging over lots of light-years.

> I think your best metaphor is either cracking root access to the Matrix or simply becoming God. Very far removed from the "trusting trust" scenario. But also removed from physical systems. Using that sort of metaphor instead of "matter lock" will insulate any criticisms from hard science. It also reduces the existential concerns to the same level as the question of "what if we're living in a simulation?"

I don't think there's any hard science consideration preventing the development the machinery for "matter lock" (I'm getting tired of my own jargon at this point, lol.) At the most general level of analysis you have a decay rate and a regeneration rate and as long as the latter is sufficiently greater than the former you're golden. Keep in mind, you would control all atomic energy on the planet in this scenario.

I think it's physically, mechanically possible to suffuse the planetary envelope (the bubble-shaped space between the hard vacuum and the magma) with a communicating network of machines that could sense and affect conditions globally. (After all, life did it.)

The problem I foresee is command and control: could you coordinate it? How does one person (or group) receive, process, and transmit information to and from this system? Here we are pressed up against the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness, which of course is directly related existential question you mention! That's the weird thing about self-reflexive consciousness: it's still a problem whether your system is "hard science" or "metaphorical" or "I'm dreaming" or whatever.

> People do publish technical details on both MNT and non-MNT...

I didn't mean that they don't, I meant that the (theoretical) people researching how to use nanotech to become Robot King don't publish.

Attaining the "ML" would be akin to becoming a local god, but how would you have to transform yourself to manage it? I believe that is the barrier, if any.

In any event, after reading "A Planet of Viruses" by Carl Zimmer [1] I'm pretty sure that they already have things locked down. It's a non-fiction pop-sci covering recent discoveries in biology of viruses, only 109 pages and nearly every one mind-blowing.

[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Planet_of_Viruses.htm...

Read that, then "Blood Music", then Gregory Bateson's "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences)" I think the Matrix is rooted... ;-)