Re:Everything Must Be Paid for Twice
by parthianshotgun on Monday June 19, 2023 @03:40PM
(#36395638)
Right I see what you mean. A disassembler and diagnostic thing might be very particular, but I suppose it's something I can Intuit, something with a high degree of dexterity and enough brains to get the broken unit back to the platonic ideal of said doodad.
It'd also be a nice springboard for an AI's first go at manufacturing and going out of spec lol
If your recycling scheme involves condensed matter physics, it might as well be magic. But if it's just known-robotics and reusable parts and good design taken to the n'th degree... that's the kind of thing that could feasibly inspire action in a reader--which is the kind of sci-fi I want to read.
Besides, there's something inelegant about breaking something all the way down just to build it all the way back up. A system that understands that the shortest path from here to there means something other than a full molecular disassembly is far more impressive than one that's just a decomposer.