Quote Originally Posted by Feign View Post
Well, if you're talking about printing proteins from basic hydrocarbons, then yeah, biology is absolutely the way to go with manufacturing. Making gold out of some other substance or oxygen out of carbon or the like requires manipulation on a subatomic level, and at that point, we aren't even anywhere close.

It would definitely be a strange culture that really embrace genetic manipulation to the point where they are growing their technology from super enhanced seeds. Of course, they'd just better be sure that there's a lot of conductive metal ore in the soil they're growing from. By definition, such technology even if let to grow wild would only thrive on places where excessive metals have been dumped into the earth. By the time people have learned to hack viruses out of nothing, they will also have learned how to enhance the immune system with similar expertise. Such a world is one of those who can afford to get themselves upgraded and those who suffer the consequences of whatever superbug the next nation over decides to make.

But again, a virus that manufactures more of itself out of thin air or cellphones that grow in regular soil displacing existing fauna are impossible without subatomic assembly processes. Even in nature, the only subatomic manufacturing process is the Sun and other stars.
There are some animals that contain metals, so there's nothing out of the ordinary there. I do understand what you're saying though. I think preparing the soil or air or whatever beforehand with the correct mixture would be a small price to pay for something that assembles itself. We're already considering it with these CO2 hogging tobacco plants: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20141909-26205.html

This would be no different than loading a program from multiple floppy disks in the 1990s. Please insert 20g of gold and press the button to continue.

Also, houses could be grown from CO2 in the atmosphere. Trees are made out of air after all.