I wrote: I am not sure what to call the software image you put into a replicator. > Design? Blueprint? Genome? >
Template? Clarke described replicators in "Profiles" (1963). He called the instructions the "matrix" or "memory." The ones we have now are only the beginning of the technology. Clarke wrote: "The advent of the replicator would mean the end of all factories, and perhaps all transportation of raw materials and all farming. The entire structure of industry and commerce, as it is now organized, would cease to exist. Every family would produce all that it needed on the spot—as, indeed, it has had to do throughout most of human history. The present machine era of mass production would then be seen as a brief interregnum between two far longer periods of self-sufficiency, and the only valuable items of exchange would be the matrices, or recordings, which had to be inserted in the replicator to control its creations." - Jed
