[extropy-chat] Re: Towards Self-Replicating Rapid Prototypers

[Emlyn]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:26:48 -0800 (PST), Adrian Tymes
<wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> Neil Halelamien wrote:
> > http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab/replicator/
> 
> Checking the details...
> 
> > While I am talking of what I mean, and before
> > arguing why this is so important, let me say exactly
> > what I mean by "make a copy of itself". I mean a
> > rapid-prototyping machine that can make all its
> > components other than:
> 
> > Self-tapping steel screws
> > Brass bushes,
> > Lubricating grease,
> > Standard electronic chips such as microcontrollers
> > and optical sensors,
> > A standard plug-in low-voltage power brick, and
> > Stepper motors.
> 
> > This list is an attempt to make a compromise between
> > immediately-achievable technology and the desirable
> > aim of shortening or eliminating it altogether.
> 
> *cough*yaright*cough*
> 
> True, it is desirable not to do more work than
> necessary; unfortunately, true self-replication does
> not all that degree of shortcutting.  Screws and
> bushes should be easy to create; power bricks, not
> that much harder since they are explicitly fabricating
> electrical components.  Grease is allowable as an
> exception: it's enough of a raw, bulk material that it
> could qualify as feedstock.
> 
> Motors and chips are the real killer.  Granted, it's
> hard to create them with the same kinds of tools that
> one would, say, make panels and rods with.  But that
> doesn't mean one can credibly claim "self-replication"
> by leaving those out.  (Indeed, I recall an earlier
> effort that managed to self-replicate *everything*,
> including the motors, except for the chips.)  Which is
> probably why any real effort towards self-replication
> should focus on an ability to build the tools that can
> automatically build motors and chips: everything else
> is easier in comparison.  (Nor does this require
> advanced lithography: if you can accept a low clock
> rate and high power consumption - self-rep doesn't
> always have to be fast and efficient - then one could
> take large slices of silicon and weld copper traces
> onto it, and force-implant impurities where
> transistors are needed.)

Come on Adrian, give them a break! Given that self replicating
fabrication machines are a good idea (I think they are), then
shouldn't expect a complete solution as v1.0 (or v0.1). I'm talking
about consumer level here, I know these things are further down the
track in the expensive, high maintenance cost world of industry.

A partial solution that builds most of the machine and requires you to
purchase feedstock & components like chips and motors is a pretty good
first shot. If that can come down to a reasonable cost, the technology
will be sitting there waiting for improvements to allow fabrication of
the more complex parts in good time, and it will also get the
self-replication meme out there. To me, the big advance here may not
be technical so much as social; getting these machines into price
range of an expensive home printer could change the way our society
works quite interestingly.

I'm imagining a suburbia where every house has a big clunky
fridge-sized self rep machine, and perhaps a similarly bulky fuel cell
based power source (or maybe even one of those atomic power sources
from 50s sci fi?). What happens next?

With the presence of the 'net, one imagines that better and better
designs come out, incremental (and some discontinuous) improvements in
self-fab technology turn up, and slowly the major areas of
manufacturing find themselves competing with these machines.

I reckon it'd take a decade or two for the machines to become good
enough to really be usable by anyone (think home PC revolution, 80s
and 90s), and for general attitudes to begin to shift from the
consumer mindset to the maker mindset.

This clunky technology could imply some *really very large* social
change. A change probably bigger than that of the "information
revolution". What kind of pushback will we get from existing industry,
whose revenue base is threatened by this? What happens to consumer
goods as they slowly begin to become information rather than
manufactured product?

I know this isn't new territory for this list. However, unlike MNT,
this looks like it might begin to happen sooner rather than later, and
through far more straightforward technologies.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *