Lego Rubik’s Cube Solvers. A new type of Evolution

The crab-router might even be a better platform for rep-rapping than the original rep-rapper. It could do scary things like wandering about finding its own fuel etc. I was thinking that it will be a while before it can make its own servos etc… but then I remembered the machine that someone made out of lego a year or two ago for solving Rubik’s Cubes… 

…so I looked it up on youtube and now there’s a whole sub-culture of Rubik’s cube solving machines

Which kindof makes me think that maybe someting that can make servos might not be so impossible afterall – just because I can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Here for example is something I hadn’t considered:

Robots that are basically single-cell creatures forming mult-cell organisms on their own.

There’s a talk here by Kevin Kelly talking about the evolution of technology – and with specific interest here is when he talks about technological evolution never dieing – the resurgence of Stirling Engines is an example of what can happen here. The technology is about 120 years old, and now they’re appearing all over the place.

What we’re seeing here is a new type of evolution.

Normal natural selection involves replicators blindly mutating and the best combinations surving to replicate again. The combination of the internet and a release of cognitive surplus (and open-source licensing models) means that every single replication/mutation can conceivably take place with the entire knowledge of everything that’s been tried and worked so far.

It’s a type of evolution that doesn’t happen in the dark. It’s still competitive but there’s a kind of modular over-arching consciousness that’s governing and driving it.