Machines are Not Alive

But people persist in believing they are - and not only that, supernatural!

But this is a late development - machines existed in human society ever since we became civilized. In fact, this was the main advantage in being civilized - it allowed large groups of people to organize themselves to accomplish things they could not otherwise - such as irrigate crops. The key concept here was organization. And organization is how any machine works.

This is what built the pyramids - workers were organized into different groups, and each one performed its function. Every worker was paid in bread, beer, and onions. Our present Business society originated in Egypt, not in Greece. The beer and beer, were replaced by money.

Our present machines, originated in the Industrial Revolution. and they were made of steel. They could perform two kinds of actions - a continual back-and-forth motion, and rotating actions. This is how the automobile engine works - the pistons go up-and-down, and the drive shaft and wheels go round-and-round.

The energy that makes them work, came from the Wind, or from Water. But this was soon replaced with the burning of fossil fuels - Coal at first, but then Oil.

Allow be to return to my original assertion - that machines are not alive. This is obvious, but it is also obvious that - at and abstract level, they are! Anyone who sees a Steam Locomotive pulling a heavy load up a steep incline - knows this instinctively, and is eager to make movies of it.

And this is how Industrial Society was organized - with one important addition: the Market. 

Then another kind of machine appeared - the Computer, powered by Electricity. But also by a series of instructions: Software. This forced a huge transition, from Hardware to Software. The Hardware is still there - the computer is also made of metal, but a different metal - Silicon.

But Software is more important, because it (with its networks: the Internet, and the Cellular) now run nearly everything, including the blog this is written on.

This was such a huge change, most people cannot comprehend it - even as it makes them obsolete, as Industrial workers.