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I just finished "The Forever Peace", a book in-part about with the economic implications of nanotech. Using nano-forges, machines that take raw materials like carbon as input and can turn them in to diamonds, America is able to gain an extremely huge foothold.

I found it extremely interesting, and finished it in 2 days.

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If you haven't already, check out "The Diamond Age" as well. Different story but deals with the sort of "idealized" form of nanotech that people dreamed of when the concept was getting a lot of hype in the 1990s (along with socio-economic conflict and plain old sci-fi, action, and adventure).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

There's also the classic of Eric Drexler, who coined the very term "nanotechnology", "Engines of Creation". I highly recommend the read. It's very good at extrapolating possibilities and issues, though I personally don't agree with the conclusions about 'defense against nanotech attacks' outpacing the offensive capabilities.

The Diamond Age is a great book. Neal Stephenson is known for researching concepts he writes about, so the technology present in the setting is based on Drexler's thesis.

I wouldn't call it "a dream" in a sense that it's utterly unrealistic; physics says that these systems can work.

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