Self-Replicating Factories: Macro to Nano

Christopher Thomas writes "A common theme in science fiction is the "replicator"; a device that can build anything on demand. An extension of this idea is the self-replicating factory, that grows in size geometrically to produce goods or to terraform hostile environments. It turns out that both of these miraculous devices are closer than they seem - in fact, to some extent they're already here. I've posted an article summarizing things."

Comments

Clarifications.

[Christopher Thomas]

A few points don't seem to be getting across adequately:

• This isn't about nanotech.
  
  95% of the article describes the interesting things that will happen as ordinary technology advances, and attempts to show a likely path it will take. The nanotech paragraphs were just added for the sake of completeness (as I'd already been talking about microtech). They are largely irrelevant to the article.
  
  
• The thesis of this article.
  
  As it seems to have been missed my post people: The purpose of the article is to point out a _probable_ path that manufacturing technology will take in the near future, and examine its corollaries. I posted it because a) the corollaries are interesting, and b) most people don't think about the fact that mundane universal fabricators will exist long before nanotech ones.
  
  

I hope this clears up a few things.

And Hemos, why is this not showing up on the main page? I had to do a search to turn it up at all.