/lit/ - Literature

>The automaton is man's perfect double, even down to the subtlety of its gestures, in the workings of its organs and intelligence, almost inducing anxiety when we perceive that there is no difference between them, and that therefore the automaton has no need of a soul since it possesses an ideally naturalised body. Because this would be sacrilege, the difference between them is still maintained, as in the case of an automaton so perfect that on stage the illusionist mimicked its staccato movements in order that at least, even if the roles were reversed, confusion would be impossible. Thus the automaton's questions remain open, making it an optimistic mechanics, even if the counterfeit always retains a diabolical connotation.

>There is nothing like this with the robot. The robot no longer questions appearances, its only truth is its mechanical efficiency. It no longer needs to resemble man, to whom it is inevitably compared. The infamous metaphysical difference which gives the automaton mystery and charm no longer exists: the robot emphasises this difference for its own benefit. Being and appearance are founded on a single substance of production and labour. The first-order simulacrum never abolishes the difference: it presupposes the dispute always in evidence between the simulacrum and the real (a particularly subtle game in trompe-l'oeil painting, but all art thrives on this difference). The second-order simulacrum simplifies the problem by the absorption of appearances, or by the liquidation of the real, whichever you prefer In any case it erects a reality without images, without echo, without mirrors, without appearances: such indeed is labour, such is the machine, such is the entire industrial system of production in that it is radically opposed to the principle of theatrical illusion. No more semblance or dissemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.

>After this, robots and machines can proliferate - this is even their law as automata, being sublime and singular mechanisms, have never done. Men themselves only began to proliferate when, with the Industrial Revolution, they took on the status of machines: freed of all semblance, freed even from their double, they grew increasingly similar to the system of production of which they were nothing more than the miniaturised equivalent. The simulacrum's revenge, which gave rise to the myth of the sorcerer's apprentice, did not take place with the automaton, on the contrary, this is the law of the second order, from which there still proceeds a hegemony of the robot, of the machine, of dead labour over living labour. This hegemony is necessary to the cycle of production and reproduction.

-- JB/SE&D

but we need more than just robots and automation; we need a culture to go with it, or something to stand in for one, to keep things circulating upon each other in a perfect operativity.

Baudrillard is /ourguy/

http://insomnia.ac/essays/the_spirit_of_terrorism/

>>9645502