Self-replicating printer in development. Another article.

Not to overhype the things: they're made of a couple of plastics and a local melting point metal, plus chips, and the goal is to have it handle all three materials, and to be able to print all of its parts apart from the chips, and lubricating grease, and it won't be make its raw materials either. Or assembling the parts, a human will have to do that. So they're nowhere near being released into the desert. But it's a step.

“We know that people are going to use the printer to try to make weapons [and] sex toys and drug paraphernalia,” he says. “This is obviously not what we’re hoping they are going to build. We are hoping they are going to build more and better RepRaps.”

Oh no, people might make cheap plastic sex toys.

And does rather well, actually. Link goes to link to picture, plus comments.

Over on rpg.net there's a Traveller thread going on which has included a bunch of transhumanist debate, of sorts. Some people saying the tech assumptions of Traveller are ridiculously retro and out of date, and others sniping at the transhumanism trend, full of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, no more realistic than Traveller and already dying to be replaced by the Mundane SF trend. Which strikes me as nutty.

( Friendslist mercy cut )

Along the way, I had a couple of posts about Bujold and transhumanism. And a brief note on how we're living transhumanism -- or what would be the build up to it if it's going to happen.

lyceum_arabica has a little thread of anticipated advances for people to list and bet on. That inspired me to say something about how I see the future. Less about specific technologies and more about the types of things which can be done, whether through AI or biotech or nanotech, emphasizing things which change the human condition to a large degree. So flying cars are not on the list ("superfast transportation" might be, except I don't see it happening much more than it has) but being free from old-age or being able to design your children in detail is.

* AI (new minds, immortal, transsapience, mind copying, challenge to law and democracy, labor-replacing slavebots, spouse-replacing lovebots)

* transsapience (understanding and control of the mind; easy for AI, but MRI and drugs or implants for humans; make yourself smarter, make yourself happy, make yourself motivated, make someone else motivated, real lie detection)

* immortality/immorbidity (free for AI; humans: body part replacement cloning or mechanical prosthetics, nerve regrowth)

* self-replicators (industrialize Mars fast! nano-microscale vs. macroscale "clanking" replicators doesn't really matter, the big thing is exponential growth on a timescale much shorter than a human generation, unhindered (unlike agriculture) by pests or parasites)

* designer offspring (AI or genetics)

* programmable matter/environment (ever greater control over and responsiveness of our surroundings to our will; smart matter, arcologies, utility fog, permeating/ubiquitous stuff, cyborged animals, climate control)

--> Resulting meme conflicts: transsapience vs. natural minds; VR vs. reality (on the one hand, cheap flexibility, on the other, modifications and robots mean being ever *more* attentive to reality, more senses, making realistic worlds even harder); human-human vs. human-bot relationships; rapid development of solar system vs. cautious exploration; whether/how to control Earth's climate; work society vs. idle human 'slaveowners'; immortalist vs. generationist (have long life or have children?); designer vs. natural offspring; animal uplift vs. not.