Will Self-Replicating Machines Engage in Foreplay?

This isn't gun-related, but I think it's a cool subject for speculation:

Rational Review has a link to a science/technology story at The Independent, "Stuff of sci-fi nightmares? An army of robots that reproduce."

This is not a new concept--and its originator, John von Neumann, is not mentioned in the article, let alone acknowledged with the credit he deserves.

"He created the field of cellular automata without computers, constructing the first examples of self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The concept was fleshed out in his posthumous work Theory of Self Reproducing Automata. The term von Neumann machine also refers to self-replicating machines. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms."

Naturally, this fostered speculation on what would happen if information being passed on from one machine to its "offspring" somehow became corrupted, and the "mutation" proved advantageous in its environment. Well, you see where this is going...