Santa Claus machine

A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to build directly, so they would need a series of machines to intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

Origin

The machine was first suggested by Theodore Taylor in 1978:

It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material – rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate. [Nigel Calder, Spaceships of the Mind, Viking Press, New York, 1978; quoted in Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle, [http://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM/3.10.htm Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines] , Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 2004]

The Santa Claus Machine requires some great advances in technology to be possible, including the ability to take any collection of matter and reconfigure it into any other type of matter. It would also presumably require a high level of artificial intelligence to operate autonomously. Finally, one of its requirements on a gigantic project such as a Dyson sphere would likely be the ability to replicate itself. This would enable a single Santa Claus Machine, given sufficient matter and energy, to construct a project of any size and operate indefinitely.

Many theorists have seen the obvious nightmare scenarios that accompany such a device, including machines running out of control and destroying an entire planet, or a clanking replicator disaster, "à la" the brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. At the other extreme, others suppose the resultant post scarcity economy would lead to a utopia.

Adrian Bowyer of the RepRap Project says he will publish his plans for a Santa Claus machineby 2009. [Robert Roy Britt, " [http://www.livescience.com/technology/050317_home_device.html Make-it-all Machine for Do-it-yourself Homeowners] ", LiveScience, 17 March 2005]

ee also

* Assembler (nanotechnology)
* 3D printing
* Universal Constructor

References

External links

* the Replicating Rapid-Prototyper Project : [http://reprap.org/ RepRap.org]
* Don Lancaster's [http://tinaja.com/santa01.html Santa Claus machine library]
* Seth Rosenthal, [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/eword.html?pg=7 "Santa Claus Machine"] , Wired magazine, may 1994