" Replicator networks,” Jason said, “are one of the things sentient civilizations tend to produce. Given the inherent difficulty of sublight-speed travel as a way of exploring the galaxy, most technological cultures eventually settle for an expanding grid of von Neumann machines—which is what the replicators are—that costs nothing to maintain and generates a trickle of scientific information that expands exponentially over historical time. "
― Robert Charles Wilson , Spin (Spin, #1)