We’ve mentioned fabbing here before – the idea of desktop ‘rapid prototyping’ systems that can ‘print’ any three dimensional object, and a proof of concept in the journey toward self-replicating machines. A small team at Cornell University have made available the open source plans for just such a device, so that anyone who is interested (and can afford to stump up for the parts) can get their own version and start experimenting in their own shed or garage. And if that sounds too much like a Cory Doctorow plot for you, you should probably take a look at the people who blogged the Fab@Home site – the RepRap project goes one step further, in that they are trying to create a fabber that can produce functional copies of itself. Eat your heart out, von Neumann.