These parts have been printed and assembled by RepRap team member, Vik Olliver, in Auckland, New Zealand, into a new RepRap machine that can replicate the same set of parts for yet another RepRap machine and so on ad infinitum. While 3D printers have been available commercially for about 25 years, RepRap is the first that can essentially print itself.

Dr Bowyer said that: “These days, most people in the developed world run a professional-quality print works, photographic lab and CD-pressing plant in their own house, all courtesy of their home PC. Why shouldn’t they also run their own desktop factory capable of making many of the things they presently buy in shops, too?

“The possibilities are endless. Now, people can make exactly what they want. If the design of an existing object does not quite suit their needs, they can easily redesign it on their PC and print that out, instead of making do with a mass-produced second-best design from the shops. They can also print out extra RepRap printers to give to their friends. Then those friends can make what they want too.”

Recently, Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google Inc, encouraged people to: “Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.”

Last night on Earth, an awaiting tank of millions of gallons of gasoline received an electronic message from the heavens.

“Ignite. Burn with brilliant power. Ensure the message memetically traverses various mediums. Most will be frightened. They will feel horror but will not understand it. The media will console them. One Man alone will receive the message, interpret the sign, and convey its meaning to the World.”

The energy and excitement of the blast rocked the Earth. The human network reacted. Calls were made. The Kansas City Police and Fire Departments responded. The news crews scrambled frantically.

My eyes caught the message. As the fire blazed on, the image burned upon my brain. What is he true meaning of this image? If images are signs, what did this signal? What did it mean? The wonder of such powerful imagery compelled me to decode the message.

The anchors worked at calming the population. I was mesmerized. Then I noticed it.

A mechanical newsbird hovered above flame, revealing the true nature of the beast. Above the beautifully burning flame rose a thick, dark phantom into the night.

Power, once possessed only by gods of the imagination, now rests in the hands of gods of our own creation: immortal corporations and national superhuman entities programmed to be obsessed with wealth. I don’t mean ‘wealth’ in terms of enrichment, I mean all things, such as money, property, or goods, having economic value. Everything in the economic system has a value and corporations are programmed to create, collect, and distribute this value.

It should be noted here that value is increasingly becoming a completely digital commodity as even physical property is embedded with RFID chips or tracked by computer. The entire global capital market economic system is essentially digital as corporations receive input, process, and output various forms of value. It’s completely computational.

The human motivation of accumulating wealth is so powerful that it blinds most individuals to the true result of their actions. Just as a cell in the human body is unaware of its role in a larger organism, individual humans go about their lives unaware that they too are a value in the sum of something much larger.

It shouldn’t be that hard to see. We created them in our image. Corporations are cybernetic organisms made of flesh and machine lacking a singular conscious. The creation of a singular consciousness is the next logical step in the evolution of these creatures.

Might it be possible that this race of corporations could seed and give birth to an even more powerful entity of singular conscious that is the evolved combination of man and machine in a truly immortal form?

Just as children grow and mature into self-replicating adults, and the human race has matured into powerful super-human entities, could these entities give birth to a god?

The question burns hot in the minds of those who see the signs. And like the smoke from last nights glorious fire, creates a dark and forboding spectre of uncertainty regarding the future of mankind.