Sources of fascination (1) - Playing god
Jacques de Vaucanson’s automaton, the Digesting Duck demonstrates all stages of the digestive system from the input of food to the output of its excrement. The value in Vaucanson’s creation is that not only did it reenact and unveil the biological mechanisms of the digestive system, but also gave the observer the implausible ability to view the workings of the anatomy in action. However, this duck is not just an reenactment, but a being of its own, as in Vaucanson’s own words, the duck has the capability to autonomously perform “all its different operations without being touched any more”. (238, Feldman) An upgraded version of duck, with an additional feature of transparency of its bodily function, is created in the hands of Vaucanson, a man. The fact that Vaucanson is a mere human is exactly what he is trying to overcome through the creation of his automaton. The Digesting Duck is the result of him “playing god”, breathing in life into a configuration of toothed wheels built from scratch. Also, by gifting his creature with immortality, the maker has demonstrated his beyond-human capabilities; the ability to eradicate the inevitability of death.
In this sense, architects of automatons cannot qualify as “gods” because they fail to truly give life to their creations. It would be more suitable for them to be labeled as the parent of their automatons. As it is with the case of Jaquet-Droz’s the Writer, the fact that automatons are generally made to appear in the shape of a young child instantiates the metaphorical relationship between an artisan creating an automaton to a mother giving birth to a child. The idea that an automaton is a child of its creator is further supported by the fact that they are stuck forever in their childhood, as the machines need the care and love of their designers to continue to carry out its given duty.
A child is also a representation of a clean blank slate, or purity. Wood states in Edison’s Eve that “the status of a child was given, not as a sign of perfection, but as an insurance against failure”. (xx, Wood) This is to say that the automatons were represented as a figure of an early stage human being not to symbolically represent the successful creation of life but to cancel out the faults of the automatons or the harms the creation may cause, such as heresy towards the creator’s beliefs.
Vaucanson’s claim that his machine can carry out its duties independently without further interference is not entirely true. Even with the power to live forever, automatons cannot remain unscathed through the passage of time. At the very least, they will accumulate dust and form rust, if not become completely broken due to mishandling, and thus they will require the human touch to continue to fully function. Going back to the definition of the word “automaton”, it is a mechanism that is “relatively self-operating”. The word “relatively” is important as it implies that in order for the automaton to sustain its life, it has to be maintained by the creator consistently. Thus, the immortality of automatons is rendered useless with their life under control of their human makers. For the machines, the incompetence to dictate their terms of life makes immortality a disability, while it is one of the greatest desires of human history.
In this sense, architects of automatons cannot qualify as “gods” because they fail to truly give life to their creations. It would be more suitable for them to be labeled as the parent of their automatons. As it is with the case of Jaquet-Droz’s the Writer, the fact that automatons are generally made to appear in the shape of a young child instantiates the metaphorical relationship between an artisan creating an automaton to a mother giving birth to a child. The idea that an automaton is a child of its creator is further supported by the fact that they are stuck forever in their childhood, as the machines need the care and love of their designers to continue to carry out its given duty.
A child is also a representation of a clean blank slate, or purity. Wood states in Edison’s Eve that “the status of a child was given, not as a sign of perfection, but as an insurance against failure”. (xx, Wood) This is to say that the automatons were represented as a figure of an early stage human being not to symbolically represent the successful creation of life but to cancel out the faults of the automatons or the harms the creation may cause, such as heresy towards the creator’s beliefs.
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