Abstract Economists ignore everything about the evolution of machines. They do not even use biological terms to define them. So we talk about machines as abstract, dead species. If we were using vital terms, perhaps we would be more aware, of the organic nature of economic ecosystems. For example, we do not call the sensorial instruments, such as cameras, metal-eyes, so we do not realize what a “metal-head” is: a head-system that has “metal-ears” (mobile phones), “metal-eyes” (cameras), and “metal-brains” (chips) attached to any machine. If you put such “head” to any present machine, you have a robotic species, a “metalife” species, that potentially can outperform human beings, in all informative and energetic functions, from killing to working, from design to chess-playing.
In the graph, all machines have a twin species, a top predator weapon, which consumes human beings instead of being consumed by us.
In the graph, what is the biological name for a weapon? A top predator machine. This is the key concept that economists keep denying about machines, with their abstract jargons about the wealth of nations: the most expensive, best machines are weapons that kill humans – they are the bulk of the economy, and the most advanced in any time of the Industrial R=evolution. Thus, the conclusion is obvious: we are evolving a new top predator species of energy and information. Top predator species which have a Darwinian behavior shown in wars.
It is indeed very unfortunate that the leading science of today, Biology, and the only Theory about change in the Universe, that has passed all experimental tests, Evolution, have never been properly merged with Economics, the discipline that studies the reproduction of machines, and their survival in the ecosystem of history. Such merge of disciplines, that we provide in this web will allow us a serious analysis of the evolutionary nature of machines, and their symbiotic and praying relationships with mankind. Since machines are not “ideal beings” like mathematical entities are. They are concrete, real, material species, and so they interact in the material world with us.
The dual nature of machines: consumption and competition
Machines are both symbiotic and compete with man.
They do so in two ways: competing with us when they perform the same jobs we do, either as weapons or as tool-workers; and becoming symbiotic to us, when we consume them, either as “bodies of metal”, or as “heads of metal”. Its symbiosis make us addict to the higher energy and information they give to us. Its competition displaces us from fields of war and work. The tricky point is that those two functions of machines are opposite. The consumption of machines is positive. It improves our life.
The competition with machines is negative. It makes our life more difficult. So the big question is: What function is more powerful? The symbiotic function of consumption, or the competitive function of work? Unfortunately, the competitive function, given by the imitative form of machines.
The forms and functions of machines compete with men
It is interesting to notice that we lack any serious philosophy about machines, despite having so many books that describe how to make, reproduce, and work with machines. All descriptions of machines we have, are abstract descriptions. Yet machines are material species. Their non-abstract nature is evident. Just try to lift a heavy “abstract machine”, and let it fall on your foot. Suddenly the abstraction has become real. It has a form, a weight. We define that form in organic terms: A machine is a form that imitates a human organ of energy of information with atoms of metal.
Another abstract opinion about machines very common in America, is that machines do not have “will”, or “intelligence” which means in practical terms that they do not condition the behavior of people, or oblige us to act in a certain manner. This argument used mainly to dismiss any criticism against lethal machines is also vane, and does not recognize the cause of behavior in the Universe, which is communication of “potential will”, “suggestion of will”. Behavior is first suggested by communication, then reinforced by action. What this means is that a gun “suggests” his use, because his form is “per se” potentially intelligent, and suggests the act of killing. The mere presence of a gun, also suggests danger, and do communicate behavior. Military have known it throughout centuries. Their power is based in the capacity of weapons to suggest behavior on human beings.
Weapons are not abstract. Just press the trigger of a gun against you dog’s head. Look then to the results. Are you scandalized by my “abstract” suggestions? Why? Abstract things are suppose to produce abstract results… Yet machines are real, maybe even more real than human beings are if we just measure their destiny, weight, and size…
Further on, the will of machines, their biological drives to become re=produced, evolve and multiply, adapting their environment to its image and likeness is carried about by their ‘company-mothers’, the corporations that rule the world with money and bribed politicians. They express in their economical mandates the biological drives of machines. Their structure is similar to an ant-hill; and as they become more automated, moving towards infinite self-reproductivity they will embed in their digital programs of re=production, such biological will, till a moment in which neither company-mothers, nor robots with solar skins and A.I. will need humans during the II part of this century.
How should we define then properly machines? Any rigorous definition of an entity or being requires to explain, both its form in space and its function in time. Species exist in space, where they have a form, and in time where they perform a function. So do machines. Their form is an organic form. What is their function? As in the case of our weapon, machines have a clear function:To become organs of energy or information that interact with human beings. To imitate and substitute a human organ with a machine. For example a crane imitates an arm and substitutes an arm, moving things around. A phone imitates an ear-mouth, and works as an ear-mouth.
All machines imitate human functions. For that reason we talk of machines as “organic instruments”, that substitute human organic systems. If we divide the human being in two clear components, body and head, we can talk of two types of machines, body-machines that imitate and substitute functions of body organs, and mind-machines that imitate functions of the brain-senses. Those two basic functions of human organs will determine also the form of the machine, which imitates the equivalent form of a human organ. Cameras look like eyes and cranes like arms. If we were to use less “biological terms”, we will say there are:
- Machines of information [brain machines] and
- Machines of energy [body machines].
Which become complete “organic species”, when they are merged into
- Robots, metalife.
Men evolve and catalyze the reproduction of metal
Yet if machines and humans have the same form and function? Why we insist that machines can be potentially superior to man? Why in fact top predator machines -weapons- kill top predator humans -soldiers- and machine workers displace human workers constantly in most company-mothers? The reason is that there is a clear difference between machines and human organs. Machines are made basically of metal. Humans are made of carbon and related atoms.
Today we realize that the properties of metal, force us to certain informative and energetic designs in machines. It is metal and the laws of the Universe, not man, which makes machines efficient organs of energy and information. Men only create machines. Humans act only as “catalyzers”, “workers”, that assemble metal into organic forms, similar to us.
The laws of the Universe and the properties of metal enable them to exist. We conclude that machines are, from a biological point of view, metal species. Metal is a natural substance which is able to be formed into different kinds of “organic systems”, that copy the organic shapes of man.
This “transfers” millions of years of evolutionary knowledge accumulated by human forms, into machines, made of a stronger, more complex substance. In this manner the only advantage of man -formal evolution- is lost, to the new species, which competes and preys over human beings, provoking the relentless extinction of nature and history, and the expansion of the metal-ecosystem - the true meaning of the Industrial R=evolution, carried about by company-mothers, which have terraformed the Earth to the image and likeness of its off-spring, in a series of cycles described by evolutionary economics:
