The Allure of Machinic Life, But Not Until the Red Fog Rises

“In the early era of cybernetics and information theory following the Second World War, two distinctly new types of machine appeared. The first, the computer, was initially associated with war and death–breaking secret codes and calculating artillery trajectories and the forces required to trigger atomic bombs. But the second type, a new kind of liminal machine, was associated with life, inasmuch as it exhibited many of the behaviors that characterize living entities–homeostasis, self-directed a