So what else might follow from the combination of heterogeneous swarms, RL-VR cross fertilisation and a dirigibile network connecting maker nodes ?
Magnet
[Magnet] is a handy URI scheme that lets you specify multiple ways to identify a file (most likely one on a peer2peer file sharing network). You can specify an FTP or HTTP URL that can be used to directly download it. You can specify a particular tracker that lets your peer2peer file sharing application download it. You can specify search terms (such as a likely file name) that an indexing service like Pirate Bay can use to find you a tracker that has it. Or you can specify a [URN] that specifies the exact content of the file being sought. Magnet does this by taking a [cryptographic hash].
Physical Object Resource Identifier (PORI)
You can imagine a similar scheme for physical objects (including people). It could include a direct web address that the object keeps updated with its physical address. It could include a search algorithm. It could include a person's full legal name and specify a particular directory service (such as a phone book) that maps name to physical location. It could include a picture of the object or person. It could even include a virtual 3D model of the object, the spec you could use to make it with a 3D printer, or (for a human) biometric information (such as how they walk, ratio of eye distance to ear distance, their DNA sequence, etc).
Assassination
While it would be nice to be able to give a PORI to a dirigible or lego robot swarm, and have them find the specified object, or deliver an object to a specified person, people are wary of giving out that sort of information because it is prone to abuse. Imagine someone using the Dirigible Transport Network to send something explosive or poisonous!
Nonce
A [cryptographic_nonce] is a hard-to-guess string added to a plaintext before hashing, to avoid someone who has the hash from working out which plaintext (from a limited sample) it corresponds to by trying multiple plaintexts until one produces the desired hash.
Fluffy Nonce
If a PORI include not the person's biometrics, but a hash of their biometrics you could do it the boring way by having them (or, more likely, their phone) supply a password to an inquiring messanger, if they wish to let the messanger verify their identity. But more fun would be to have a fluffy toy (eg a beeble-bear) that's a physical nonce, and the messanger must take the person's biometric and add it to the fluffy nonce's metric before hashing them, to see if the resulting hash matches the destination it was required to seek. The design plan for the fluffy toy (or small sculpture, or hat with a bar code on it) would be private to the person, and something they could use to re-create it with a 3D printer if the original gets lost. Indeed, it would mean that when you switched hats you did indeed become a different personage.
Orienteering
In the sport of orienteering you are given a succession of distances and compass bearings, with perhaps a few "Move to the forked tree you can see to the North West" thrown in. In some circumstances this works better than just being supplied with a map reference to end up at, since the route you take can matter (for example, avoiding a mine field). For a robot in a city location, being able to specify a series of PORIs, rather than just the lat-long of the end point, would allow things like seeking a hotel concierge at a check-in desk to ask for the room number to deliver a parcel to.
Mix Networks
Ok, but couldn't an enemy just follow the dirigible to see who the package gets delivered to? In the virtual world, there's a solution for this. [Mix Networks]. Anonymous remailers use this technique, though it depends on the message itself (once sealed an encrypted envelope) being difficult to distinguish from other messages. Traffic analysis is one attack on the technique, but [garlic routing] (combining and splitting packages) helps resist this, once things get busy enough.
Anonymous Post
Something similar could be done in RL. Suppose you are a dissident in China who wants a printing press, and you don't have time to print your own. You want to use the Dirigable Transport Network to get parts for a press that already exist out there in the storage cloud. If the network specified a few common standard sized containers, and most of the traffic in the network uses these, then the Chinese government will have a difficult time tracking which packages are bits of printing press, and which are bits of state approved plough shares. Especially if nodes commonly re-package items during transshipment, combining items for different parties so they can share the same dirigable, or splitting a larger consignment into smaller bits and sending the bits via different routes.
Steganography
Sometimes, in the digital world, just the act of sending an encrypted message is suspicious, and you need to disguise it as something else, or hide that there even is a message being sent. This art is known as [Steganography]. Techniques include hiding a message inside another message (as capitalisation and white spaces) or in the least significant bits of a photograph. If you can send two similar photographs, information can be hidden in the XOR of the two. Other things messages can be disguised as include spam, video feeds and random numbers (such as one time pads). [Entire file systems] can be hidden in apparently unformatted disc partitions.
Physical Stegano
If printed physical objects become cheap, you could use hide valid parts among many fake ones (or ones for a different valid object). You could split your design so many of your parts are held in common with designs for other objects (eg who knows what a lego brick is going to be built into?). You could use multiple designs for the same object, each splitting it a different way. You could add false structure to a part, to make it look like something else, and then later program a 3D lathe on which bits to subtract.
Sneakernet
Ok, so suppose you have reliable anonymous delivery. It is useful for delivering made items, but what else could it be used for? [Sneakernet]! Let's go back, a moment, to thinking about a convention hall. Someone walking across a room carrying a [flash USB key] full of data actually has remarkably high bandwidth. The latency isn't great, but sometimes that's not important. Suppose two geeks meet at a convention and decide they want to swap some files on their laptops. The files might be music, movies, git software stores, design specs for printing on 3D printers, or anything else. It is easy to use WiFi? to compare the file names and decide which ones each person wants, but to move the files themselves over WiFi? might take hours. Suppose instead you have a robot with a USB key. It plugs the key into one laptop, gets a key's worth of pre-arranged files, trundles off to find the other laptop, plugs in and transfers them.
Data Haven
Indeed, if all your robot and dirigable messangers include USB keys as standard, and nodes provide anonymous encrypted data storage services, what you'd have is a [data haven]. One that could use incremental synchs over the internet to improve timeliness, but which wasn't dependant upon the internet and could (in the event of a catastrophe) substitute for it, espcially in areas where the messanger density is great enough to form a [WISP].
Off the grid
Talking of catastrophes, living [off the grid] (in the wider sense of being [self-sufficient]) is popular with [survivalists] who fear (or, at least, wish to prepare for) the worst. It is also popular with anarchists, libertarians, and others who seek autonomy from oppressive governance. So let us ask, what other aspects of society could the sort of system we've described so far allow us to substitute for?
Banking
With anonymity and data havens come [anonymous Internet banking] efforts, such as [eCache]. And with money comes the need to defend the infrastructure from attack and scams, which leads directly onto the sort of [Web of Trust tht Frost layers on top of Freenet]. You may be anonymous, but your chosen [avatar] has a reputation. Nodes, rather than publically announcing themselves may just inform the nodes of those the node owner trusts, thus forming multiple interlocking [darknets].
Crime and Punishment
When good are cheap, theft isn't a major problem. The main 'punishment' for a node that cheats, snoops, steals stuff or is just unreasonably inefficient is to lose reputation, be cut out of the loop, and thereby find it harder to get service from others. But what about the functionality of the real police force or military? Well, if dirigables carried simple video cameras, storing images on their USB keys, the slow accumulation of the resulting footage would put Google Earth to shame. Using something like [Solipsis] to build up a 3D model of reality, which darknets could then diff against to notice changes in their environment and track objects of interest (such as cars and people), would bring the Goldfish Bowl society terrifyingly close. Combine that with non-violent harassment techniques mirrored from online spam, such as spraying the house of a would-be thief, vandal or enemy of the darknet with paint, cheap perfume, or even little robots who wake them up every hour to say "Aww, someone needs a hug!"
Medicine and Employment
[Local Currencies] such as http://www.camlets.org/whatis.html camlets] would, fitting in with the swarms philosophy (which doesn't distinguish between human supplies services and machine supplied services, letting them bid on equal terms), allow trading of local services such as doctoring. And the anonymous post could be used to exchange herbs and medicines. Robots and telepresence could also help in some circumstances.
Agriculture
While some parts of traditional agriculture can be done by robots (eg weed picking), it is far from being fully automatable. However, [aquaponics] is a viable alternative that can be automated, given [sufficient water] and nutrients. Some things, like fresh fruit, wouldn't be suitable for distribution over a network with uncertain delivery times, but basics such as [flour], oils and sugars can easily be produced hydroponically and stored long term. Indeed, talking of oil, so can biofuels and many other components for a chemicals industry.
Governance
However what can be used to transmit needed medicines past corrupt governments can also be used to transmit weapons and drugs past efficient benevolent governments. To which they tend to object. They also tend to object to things that infringe on copyright and move whole sectors of industry outside the tax base. For an example of a [grey market], read about the effect of [Silk Road]. What should be done about this?
Seasteading
One solution proposed by libertarians is [seasteading]. Put your autonomous off-the-grid node on a boat, sail it out into international waters, and live upon the resources of the sea. (Other variants include heading to the moon, mining asteroids, floating castles in the sky and submerged sea floor colonies, but let's try to stick to things that might be made with 3D printers in the next decade or two.) If materials are no object, could a floating structure be made from bioplastics (and other printable stuff) that's large enough to weather a deep ocean storm? Or could a smart raft be made from smaller bits that, in the event of a large storm, splits into smaller pieces (perhaps some just seal up and submerge) and collects back together afterwards, leaving the humans requiring only a sea-worthy boat as a core. Could a 3D printer produce a robot that can fish? Could it produce a machine to filter [gold] from sea water? Are there designs for dolphin shaped robots, that encode their data transmissions in sonic squeaks?
The second solution is to change how nations are governed. A nation that embraces maker nodes and robotics might gain an immense competitive advantage over a neighbouring country, which is a strong inducement to change. State supported barrage balloons, providing mid-air 'refueling' by swapping depleated batteries for fully chaged one (charged by wind power on the big balloon). Manna from heaven as companies fight to sponsor free arial delivery of, not just bread, but 3D printed chocolate and ornate edible goodies. Pick your own [Utopa].
Prohibition
The third solution is the one favoured by Luddites through history. Turn back the tide. It's never worked yet, but that won't stop countries trying.
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