#self-replicating

[iconoclasty]

[timwrightt]

[konczakowski]

[futurescope]

Self Replicating Robot Challenge

Fraser Cain, Product Manager for HeroX, writes:

I’m a big fan of robots, but building robots is hard.

You need a lot of tools, you get grease on your hands. There’s reading involved.

Robots are here to do hard work right? So I believe building robots is a job for robots. I’m challenging all you robot builders to solve this problem. I want to see a robot copy itself from raw materials. Then those two robots get together and make a third robot, and so on, and so on. Crafting a robot capable of making another robot is a difficult task. I’m game to make it worth your while. I’m offering a crisp Canadian $100 bill to the first one across the finish line.

This won’t necessarily be enough money to encourage robot creators around the globe, despite the massive bragging rights that go along with it. And maybe you’re watching this thinking “Hey, I love robots too! Yet I have no idea how to build them”.

And so it’s also you I’m calling upon. You and all other future thinking people to join me and pledge to make this a reality. Let’s make an X-Prize, but for robots.

[read more] [interesting comment section on nextbigfuture]

[fractalotl]

“We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message ”

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings

[beyondsingularity]

Researchers build a robot that can reproduce

"Cornell University researchers have created a machine that can build copies of itself. Admittedly the machine is just a proof of concept -- it performs no useful function except to self-replicate -- but the basic principle could be extended to create robots that could replicate or at least repair themselves while working in space or in hazardous environments, according to Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and computing and information science, in whose lab the robots were built and tested."

[jimharland]

The first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine.

[gospelcenteredliving-blog]

Visit Original Link

Matthew’s passage on the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) has Jesus proclaiming to his disciples (us) a command, that as we are going, also make disciples of all nations. The Greek rendering emphasizes this as an important aspect of our broader mission to love God and serve others (Mark 12:28-31); while we are going, in our daily lives, we are to be making disciples of all nations. 

Jesus’s model of discipleship revolved around preparing the apostles to go out and bring all nations unto himself. The picture we see in Scripture, specifically as we look at the origins of the church in the New Testament, is of people involved in self-replicating discipleship. Scripture speaks to build a love and knowledge of the Word, that we should be able to give an account for the hope we have inside and encourage the growth of this hope in each other.

Our desire should be for the church to be filled with well-discipled, mature believers, who are continually discipling less-mature believers. Christ discipled the apostles, the apostles discipled the early church believers, and these believes continued this pattern of self-replicating discipleship amongst new believers, so on and so forth. Thus, we are the product of discipleship, and as a command of our Lord we should yearn to be churches that disciple well.