[ I always think of a Von Neumann Machine as a self-replicating device. Von Neumann himself called it a "Universal Constructor". Some people use the term to refer to a computing machine that uses a single storage structure to hold both the set of instructions on how to perform the computation and the data required or generated by the computation. I call this the von Neumann architecture. ]
In the late 1940s, John von Neumann suggested a self-replicating machine. Bacteria and other living entities are also self-replicating, but von Newmann not only introduced the idea of an entity that could be first be made by humans and then reproduce it self — a golem in modern garb — but suggested it be a machine that required no more than a million bits of information.
According to a 1980 NASA study, simple bacteria have a complexity of about 10 million bits. The study proposed a device for the moon. It might require 100 billion to a trillion bits. Even then, it might not be fully self-replicating. It might not be able to fabricate every one of its own parts: it might lack `parts closure'.
Although most people think of Von Neumann machines as robots or robotic factories, human societies fit the criteria, too. On the one hand, this notion is straightforward and obvious; on the other hand, by thinking of societies as Von Neumann machines, we can think differently about them than we usually do.
Let us go back to human beginnings: the earliest societies taught their children how to duplicate, more or less, what the elders did, both to support themselves physically, with food, clothing, and shelter, and culturally, with religion, law, and humor.
We can think of a society metaphorically as a ship with a crew, a `ship of state', or as an animal, such as a bear, or as an old man. Likewise, we can think of a society as a complex, self-reproducing machine with sensors, blue prints, energy requirements, and effectors; or in more biological language, with eyes and ears, with a genome, with food requirements, and hands.
Moreover, we know that inexact duplication leads to evolution (or extinction). Humans pass on genes through sex; they pass on knowledge and culture through words and actions. Consequently, in a social Von Neumann machine inheritance is both Darwinian and Lamarckian. `Memes' are important as well as `genes'.
Ancient societies took a long time to replicate: they reproduced themselves once per generation, with some parts, such as shelters or fields taking longer to reproduce. They added little from century to century. Mostly, people replaced what was worn out.
In the modern world, we do not think merely of reproducing a society, but of adding to it: of adding cultural and built goods to it, and reducing its bads, such as pollution and injustice.
As of 2000, the fastest self-replicating social systems are economies that duplicate their economic output in seven years, a 10% per year growth rate. This sort of number is not exact: along with the goods that are measured to double in seven years come bads, which are often not measured.
(For a `conventional' Von Neumann machine, such as a robotic factory, the replication goal seems to be for a reproduction time of a few months, a few weeks, or even less.)
A Von Neumann machine consists of parts. These can be used to analyze the various parts of an economic and social system:
Currently the `brain' of a Von Neumann machine in which humans take part consists of the people who make decisions that influence the whole society, such as poets and engineers, a few generals, a few of the rich, and some politicians.
In science fiction novels, writers have suggested societies in which computers make many or all the decisions.
In a society, sensor information, what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, is transformed into reports for others. In the past, reports were almost always anecdotal. They were stories. Sailors and spies, people who loved strangers, told stories about their adventures abroad. People at home told of the conditions and situations with which they were familiar.
Nowadays, some reports come as statistics about production and surveys of people. Collection and presentation can be, although it often is not, designed to reduce the dangers of bias and selection.
A society reproduces itself by reproducing its religion, ritual, law, methods of cultivating land, making shelter and clothes, by reproducing its knowledge, habits, and characteristics, as well as by reproducing its physical embodiment, whether people or houses.
In the past, much information resided in ritual and tacit knowledge, or else in a mysterious biological inheritance. Nowadays, more is known and more is written explicitly.
Paths, roads, railroads, telephones, all make up the `circulatory system' of a modern country. In the past, roads were few and paths perilous. Only shipping was relatively inexpensive and then only over the past 10 millennia.
Each era has its own technology. 2000 years ago, drinking vessels were made of bronze. They were called `bronzes'. But glass making become more widespread at about that time, and people began to shift to drinking `glasses'.
Over the past two centuries, manufacturing technology has changed and changed again. Now, many items cost less to produce. Most people like this increase in material wealth, even when it comes with new forms of injustice and new or more imposing pollution.
(Often people in a government or ruling circle choose a method that is not so unpleasant for them, but is dreadful for ordinary people. People in a ruling circle, for example, may figure that they will always live in rooms with filtered air, and not care about the air pollution that sickens ordinary people.)
Another side effect has to do with conceptions of justice. Not all, but a part of a feeling of justice comes from what people learned as children: the `right way' to act. With changes in technology, the `right way' can become the `wrong way'. Thus, in the past, many people lived in villages. In a village the way to ensure economic and social security is different from the way to ensure it in a city. The patterns of the one do not scale to that of the other.
At the end of World War I, the victors created several new countries in Eastern Europe. One method — one that did not always succeed — was to draw a national border along a linguistic border. Differing languages do present a barrier, as do differing rituals and customs.
In the past, people used fire and wind and human and animal strength. Although fire was important to the ecology, neither fire nor wind had as much impact as human and animal action. And neither human nor animal action had much impact on the world.
Now, modern technology provides for vastly different and more powerful effectors, like bulldozers. Already, humans move about as much earth each year as nature does with wind and water.
Most past energy sources, such as grain for eating, hay for horses, or wood for burning, gained their energy through `low energy density' transformations. All had to be grown.
Many modern `alternative energy sources' are similar: the sun's rays, wind, waves ... Only uranium fueled nuclear power plants and as yet unbuilt hydrogen or hydrogen-boron nuclear fusion plants are alternatives that make use of `high energy density' transformation.
But mainstream contemporary energy sources, oil, natural gas, and coal, have `high energy densities'. (Their beginnings did not; but that is so long ago, few think of them.)
Well, it turns out that human excreted material is not necessarily polluting. But it has to be handled with care, for without good sewer systems, people fall ill from infection.
The materials excreted from the non-human part of our Von Neumann machines are worse. No one has yet figured out how to make much use of the side effects of agriculture, of metal mining and refining, of logging, or of burning coal, gas, and oil. The only remedy seen so far is to figure out a different way of doing the job, or of not doing the job.
In the old days, the side effects could be as bad as they are now. The ancient deforestation of the Mediterranean region was as bad as recent deforestation. But most side effects were too small to cause much trouble. The `bads' could go into the river and be diluted, or into the air. A smaller area was deforested. Nowadays, the amounts of bad are large.
In old times a society might survive without full `parts closure' — it could gain new ideas, new techniques, and new blood from a neighboring but different society. In the present, in so far as you think of the Earth as being made up of various Von Neumann machines, each society enjoys even less `parts closure'. But if you think of the Earth as now just one segmented, but entire Von Neumann machine, we either enjoy complete `parts closure' or we are dying.
In so far as we are mining coal, oil, and natural gas, and not engaging in sustainable activities, we are dying. We are a Von Neumann machine that cannot quite reproduce itself exactly, but which can reproduce itself well enough to carry on for a time.
The process of dying can go on for a long time. One generation can succeed another. I remember moving to a new house when I was young. On its land, my father found an old dump with car parts in it. Eventually he learned the story and told it to me: a previous owner had kept taking apart his car. Every time he did this, he also put it back together again. But each time, he found leftover parts. Those he threw in the dump. But the car kept running. Whatever he threw out, was not really necessary. The car lasted a good long time. But, eventually, it stopped working.
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