The evolutionary tendency of machines, given improving material and computational capabilities, is not towards perfection of static human notions of the machinic (artistically mimicked or conceptually modeled), but towards the hyperorganic.

By hyperorganic, I mean an evolutionary mode that drives increasing complexity along both machinic and organic dimensions. This gives us machines from qualitatively distinct evolutionary design regimes. Machines that exhibit organic idioms but defy comparisons with specific biological organisms, and also exhibit alien aspects that don’t fit organic idioms.

This is not as complicated a point as it might seem. The ball-and-socket joint is idiomatically organic (your hip joint is an example). The (macro-scale) wheel-and-axle is idiomatically machinic. A machine that features a ball-and-socket joint more complex than any natural example, and wheels, would count as hyperorganic. Certain Boston Dynamic robots are already there.


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www.joshbeckman.org/notes/837634524