Neumann
Nauri 3
Image from Juan Ochoa

Neumanns are self-replicating autonomous machines, residents of interplanetary or even interstellar space. Though some varieties of vec may have onboard neumann capability, the term "neumann" has more typically referring to neumann-capable vecs who work in space, especially those exploring regions too remote to be easily reached by organics or used for extended military operations at vast distances from the nearest stargate. Under the right conditions, a neumann is able to build a working copy of itself using materials in its environment. Use of Neumanns is often discouraged by centralists because of their tendency to become self-sentient and act in unpredictable ways, even on occasion founding entire clades and empires. However they are too valuable in opening up the frontier, and will continue to be used, both for exploration and development, and in warfare. It is impossible to estimate accurately the number of turingrade or superturing neumanns, motherships, daughterships, turingrade and higher drones, and macroscale self-replicators of various kinds, throughout space, but a figure of twenty quadrillion would not be unreasonable
 
Articles
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
additions by John B, Stephen Inniss, Todd Drashner
Initially published on 14 August 2001.