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a re the genes of today. And the latest versions of those first primitive
protective suits are you and me.
There's another aspect to Dawkins replicators that helps explains
some of nature's more reprehensible habits. Imagine a day in the
future when some clever engineer invents an entirely new industrial
process--a manufacturing technique that makes factories and workers
obsolete. Under the new system, management committees that sit
around anxiously pondering the next profitable move are as useless as
last week's donuts. The enormous stamping machines, pressing
devices and even welding robots are unnecessary artifacts to be tossed
into museums and gawked at from time to time. What has replaced
them?
An ultra-miniaturized factory complete with a built-in blueprint
for its finished product. The device is so small that you can fit millions
of them on a flyspeck and so inexpensive that a penny will buy you
more than you can count.
These little wonders have another advantage. You can scatter
them at random. They take care of the rest. There's no more need to
spend billions digging metals out of the earth or cracking chemicals
from oil and turning them into plastics. The automated mini-factories
find what they need without help, sensing the presence of unprocessed
industrial materials in a pile of garbage, a whiff of air, or a lump of dirt.
If they run across the necessary substances, they immediately go to
work assembling the finished goods. If they don't discover what they
need, these little babies simply fail to activate. A deactivated
mini-factory is no great loss. After all, millions of the
micro-construction units can be turned out for the price of a stick of
gum.
When the new system becomes popular, however, it turns out to
have a glitch. The scheme is too successful. Each product is cranked
out in a world overrun with other gizmos stamped out by the same
system. What's more, each product of the mini-factories is
programmed to go out and gather the raw materials to make more
<< < GO > >>
23
23
23
a re the genes of today. And the latest versions of those first primitive
protective suits are you and me.
There's another aspect to Dawkins replicators that helps explains
some of nature's more reprehensible habits. Imagine a day in the
future when some clever engineer invents an entirely new industrial
process--a manufacturing technique that makes factories and workers
obsolete. Under the new system, management committees that sit
around anxiously pondering the next profitable move are as useless as
last week's donuts. The enormous stamping machines, pressing
devices and even welding robots are unnecessary artifacts to be tossed
into museums and gawked at from time to time. What has replaced
them?
An ultra-miniaturized factory complete with a built-in blueprint
for its finished product. The device is so small that you can fit millions
of them on a flyspeck and so inexpensive that a penny will buy you
more than you can count.
These little wonders have another advantage. You can scatter
them at random. They take care of the rest. There's no more need to
spend billions digging metals out of the earth or cracking chemicals
from oil and turning them into plastics. The automated mini-factories
find what they need without help, sensing the presence of unprocessed
industrial materials in a pile of garbage, a whiff of air, or a lump of dirt.
If they run across the necessary substances, they immediately go to
work assembling the finished goods. If they don't discover what they
need, these little babies simply fail to activate. A deactivated
mini-factory is no great loss. After all, millions of the
micro-construction units can be turned out for the price of a stick of
gum.
When the new system becomes popular, however, it turns out to
have a glitch. The scheme is too successful. Each product is cranked
out in a world overrun with other gizmos stamped out by the same
system. What's more, each product of the mini-factories is
programmed to go out and gather the raw materials to make more
<< < GO > >>