We've had a problem over the last decade or so: how do governments deal with populations where the individuals have more and more power?<p>America has traditionally been more libertarian than most countries, so the crisis isn't as bad here, but we still see the signs. We're outlawing doing certain kinds of reverse engineering, we're making copyright violations a criminal offense, and so forth. (Most of our government reaction has been in the form of protecting large industries).<p>Some other countries are seeing crackdowns on where you can go on the internet, who you can talk to. To those countries, individuals simply having the power to gather information is too much for them.<p>I hate to make cataclysmic predictions, but I think the U.S. is going to get pulled more and more into your house and head. Where you surf, what you consume, what kinds of things you print on your 3-D printers. 3-D printing is the thing that is going to change everything, because now we can <i>make</i> whatever we need without having to rely on established patterns of commerce (which the government can control).<p>If it helps any, I don't think this is some sort of deliberate power grab. Quite frankly I don't think the people we have running things are anywhere near qualified enough to be making the decisions they are, On top of that, we have no examples throughout history of a government with the ability to control and monitor so much of each person's life. There's no precedent.<p>3-D printing, to me, is the one tech that over the next 50 years or so will dramatically change everything. Robots are a close second. Fun times to be alive! (Or perhaps a more accurate word than "fun" would be "interesting")