another step closer to reality

[IdaGno]

The New Cyborg Factory

Some day, Lipson believes, every home will have a "fabber," a machine that replicates objects from plans supplied by a computer. Such devices could change how we acquire common products, he suggests: Instead of buying an iPod, you would download the plans over the Internet and the fabber would make one for you.

The Original Cyborg Factory

[The_Reckoning]

Can you imagine what that'd do for homemade weapons?

[Straybow]

Can you imagine the DRM crap they would saddle the thing with? Gaaah! I'd rather be stuck shopping at Walmart for all eternity.

[Xian]

Totally makes the concept of "open source" literal

somebody pull up Chairman Yang's quote about "using tools to make better tools" from polymorphic software

[Blake]

One day someone is going to invent and open-source one of these things, and the world will change, pretty much overnight.

And by that I mean specifically one of these machines that can not only build new things, but actually replicate itself, making it effectively free beyond the labor to gather the source materials.

A tragedy of the commons awaits .

That day may even come sooner than I was expecting.

[Solver]

And ten years later, we'll all be working for the machines that rule the Earth .

[IdaGno]

Originally posted by Xian
somebody pull up Chairman Yang's quote about "using tools to make better tools" from polymorphic software

Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

The Chairman also said this:

I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Essays on Mind and Matter"

The_Reckoning: Your comment made me literally fall out of my chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. (You just gotta be a fellow American!)

Must return now to what really matters - Aki's about to eliminate Fungoboy!