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

[Emlyn]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 17:11:30 -0800 (PST), Adrian Tymes
<wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> --- Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Problem is, this much has previously been accomplished.  And quite a
> few potential uses for self-rep can't be done if you have to supply
> non-feedstock items.  However...
> 

Yes, both of these things are true. However, as I said it's a first step.

> > 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.
> 
> ...you have a very good point.  If it helps bring about true self-rep,
> then that's good.  (Especially if all the components are standard
> commodities - for instance, no chips designed just for this machine,
> but standard chips made by several different manufacturers.
> "Commodity" is not that far from "feedstock", in places where shipping
> a commodity is not a problem.)
> 
> > 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.
> 
> The device would have to be easy to reconfigure so that it didn't just
> produce copies of itself, but that's probably more of a software tweak
> than a hardware tweak.

Lol, I didn't mean to imply that a self-replicating machine can *only*
replicate itself. Rather, it is a general purpose part fabricating
machine, which can incidentally make a copy of itself (requiring some
standard extra parts, chips for example). So I can make all kinds of
things with it, including a copy of itself that I can give to my
friend, sans a few small difficult bits.

> 
> > 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.
> 
> 3D printers already exist, although they have problems creating things
> made from the metals they are made from.

Which is the gap that is yet to be jumped. You need a 3D printer that
can make (most of) another 3D printer, dropping the cost way down
(manufacture & delivery & marketing costs are replaced by the cost of
feedstock and maintenance on a friend's replicator).

> 
> > 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?
> 
> We're already seeing that today.  Witness CNC machines and 3D printers.

I probably don't know enough about them, but what I do know is that I
don't have one, and I can't afford one.

> 
> At first, the industry tries to make an industry out of the new
> gadgets.  "They're expensive" or "you need lots of training to be able
> to get much out of them" are perhaps the two most common excuses, and
> for a while they're true.  But they also become self-perpetuating
> myths (and contributing to this perpetuation could be seen as part of
> the industry's pushback).  When those shatter, the industry retreats
> into whatever pieces remain: in this case, screw/bushing/motor
> fabrication, or possibly the design and licensing of new plans for
> tools.  (Hello, DRM; who gets to issue the licenses for wrenches?)

Well, the DRM fight continues. I think the issue of "intellectual
property" (a suspect concept at the best of times) is the primary
challenge for the world today. Getting it wrong now (which we are
making a very good shot at doing) will break a lot of the potential
great stuff down the track. Screwing up IP (by enforcing it!) will
probably successfully stop Singularity, at least until after we are
all dead. Maybe that's a good thing, depending on your point of view.

> 
> But in this case, the industry has one advantage that may never go
> away: mass production.  If their supply and distribution chain is such
> that they can get a screw to you for 2 cents, while ordering the
> feedstock, setting things up, and adding in the amortized cost of the
> fabricator would mean the screw costs you 3 cents, it's still more cost
> effective to go with the traditional manufacturer.

Well, the manufacturer needs to distribute bulky real world items and
make a profit. Neither of these apply to someone making an item for
themselves at home (although feedstock needs to be distributed). This
may be able to compensate for the advantages of mass production. Also,
people like "free" stuff.

For example, look at downloaded music. I think that if you factored in
the costs of a computer (or at least part thereof), the time needed to
screw around searching, downloading, redownloading with Kazaa or
equivalent (you can assume middling to poor computer literacy for the
average user), some sort of cost to represent the risk of being caught
and sued by the RIAA, and the cost of CDs where appropriate, you might
come up with a cost per album that is at least in the general ballpark
of the cost of that album on CD from a shop, and is perhaps higher,
mostly depending on the price you put on your time.

Add to this that you don't get nice album covers and that the sound
quality is inferior (mp3 is, after all, a lossy compression regime),
and you've got to wonder whether downloading music off the 'net is
economically competitive in the most common case.

> 
> Which points to two avenues of economic competition: get the cost of
> the fabricator itself (including learning how to use it effectively)
> down, and work out the logistics to supply everyone who has one with
> feedstock at a reasonable cost.

Getting the cost of production of the fab down shouldn't be too hard;
most of the parts you get from someone else with a fab, and the small
amount of difficult stuff you buy. Note that the idea is to release
the fab's design as "open source" (hopefully under a Creative Commons
license), so there is no manufacturer (eventually) who can extract a
rent.

Learning how to use it will be tougher; it'll probably stay in the
hands of the hard bitten enthusiast for a while, until many iterations
down the track it gets easier to work with.

Feedstock will just get cheaper as the demand grows and a network
effect develops; this machine should become cheaper, easier to use,
and easier to feed, over time.

Basing it loosely on the takeup of PCs, I'd give it roughly ten to
twenty years from the first machines appearing in the hands of
individuals, through to it beginning to penetrate the mainstream and
begin to really effect our culture.

btw, this is the best thing that can happen for MNT. Machines like
this will open the memetic path for it; MNT becomes just another type
of fab (albeit the best one!).

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-- 
Emlyn

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