Von Neumann machine - Wikipedia

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 03:36 PM 4/8/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>As someone who was a Gerard O'Neill <http://www.ssi.org/obit.html> fan
long

The L-5 dude?  I never knew he dabbled in mental-nano-masturbation.
I'm familiar with his macroscopic living-in-$pace speculations.


>The term von Neumann machine also refers to the idea of a
self-reproducing
>machine, which was first examined in a rigorous manner and popularized
by
>John von Neumann who called it a "Universal Constructor." In principle,
if
>a machine (for example an industrial robot) could be given enough

Just remember that Johnny was playing symbol-games, having a little
cellular automata fun to prove it could be done.  Not really surprising
once you "get" the concept of a description-of-a-machine being processed

by a machine.

BTW, surely you can find a better ref than Wpedia?