MakerBot: Prelude of the Matrix

So the latest issue of NewScientist has an article about a new kind of robot, MakerBot. It is a  kind of machine that is able to make anything, if material and methods are given, including itself. They even have a website selling cheap kits of different models. The famous one is a CupCake machine making delicious cup cakes.

Yeah the whole idea sounds cool. Finally after thousands years of struggling we are free from labour works. The machine can even replicate themselves! In fact the machines on sale are offsprings of some earlier made machines. So they are having a family tree already!

However the creators say there will be some errors when a new machine is born. The errors will be accumulated generation by generation. But they don't think it will be a problem.

Wait... what's the definition of life again? Self-replicable? Having tiny errors every generation? The reason why computers haven't rule the world, (somebody argues they already are, think about how many hours we need to work for computers! the energy we feed them and information we provide them) is because they are not on a stage of self-replication. Once they are, things will change, slightly. And slightly.



So now we are doing something to help the process. It's probably only a butterfly, flapping its wings, people are amazed at its beauty and not aware of the tornado ahead it brings with.

Or probably the butterfly has already flapped, and this MakerBot is Hermes, delivering the message on the eve of the catastrophe.

Well I am generally not conservative about science. But still I am a little bit concerned because the inventors sometimes love their stuff so much that they spoil them.