In 1970, noting the extreme cost of space exploration, the physicist Freeman Dyson proposed a wild idea: send a machine into space that is capable of building copies of itself from materials it finds. This would provide an unlimited production and exploration capacity for a finite cost.
Although just a thought experiment, Dyson’s idea is not as crazy as it sounds. In the early 1980s, NASA funded a series of investigations into cheap space colonization which involved building self-replicating factories on the moon. It’s theoretically possible, but robot factories building more robot factories poses a huge maintenance problem. After all, you’d need an army of repair robots to fix things when they break down. And, who repairs the repair robots?
Eric Drexler, a proponent of nanotechnology, describes a more elegant solution. He envisions tiny, molecular “assemblers” that can build copies of themselves and other items of greater complexity — a bottom-up version of the self-replicating factory idea. He also notes that such technology, if not tamed properly, could replicate out of control consuming all the resources on the planet resulting in the so called Grey Goo Scenario.
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| Copyright Shane Willis |
Thought experiments aside, some researchers have succeeded in building primitive, yet practical self-replicating machines. Adrian Bowyer from the University of Bath developed a rapid prototyping machine called RepRap that can make most of the parts necessary to build… another RepRap machine.
Bowyer’s RepRap project is now replicating “in the wild”. On November 30, 2008, the first user outside the lab used one of the machines to produce and sell a set of RepRap parts to someone else. Being a prototyping machine, RepRap is not limited to copying itself. It has been used to create ordinary objects including a coathook, a pair of sandals, and a fly swatter. The potential for such a machine is vast and is fortunately not likely to turn the world into goo anytime soon.
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“The potential for such a machine is vast and is fortunately not likely to turn the world into goo anytime soon.”
While it is unlikely to literally turn the world into grey goo Reprap is VERY likely to have a profound and very destructive effect on established supply chains on which established manufacturing industries depend.
As a small example, a year ago I cracked the lid to the windshield washer tank in my Jeep. A replacement cost me about $5.80. Now, I can make one on my Reprap machine literally for a few cents worth of plastic.
When you think of almost any appliance in your home, the cost of the bits that actually make it work is usually about 5-10% of the sale price. The rest is the casing in which the bits fit and costs another 5-10%. The rest of the price you pay goes to profit and distribution costs.
Reprap is a VERY disruptive technology to established ways of doing things. The squawks and brainless behaviours we’ve seen exhibited by the RIAA and MPAA over the past 5-6 years over file sharing will be nothing compared to the noise that manufacturers, both here and abroad will be making with Reprap technology becomes commonplace.
Cory Doctorow summed up what we can be looking forward to back at the beginning of 2006 in his story, Printcrime.
http://craphound.com/?p=573
It’s not a pretty picture.
“In 1970, noting the extreme cost of space exploration, the physicist Freeman Dyson proposed a wild idea: send a machine into space that is capable of building copies of itself from materials it finds.”
I think it was Von Neumann who first had the idea of self-replicating machines. He died in 1957.