A quote in Enlightened Automata really struck me which was, “destiny itself is determined by particular genies who guide us without our knowing and without our seeing the strings which hold us; at last that in this lower world we are all like real puppets, ignorant and utterly blind slaves.(p. 16)”  It states that we have no will power and that we are guided by external beings, which made me think about the fact that there’s a high chance that we are not in control of ourselves. We are all born with different genes which shape our personalities along with our different experiences. We do not choose our genes we are just born with them which lead us to make decisions in our lives, which can be right or wrong. So if someone steals for example, he is lead to that decision of stealing by the experiences he went through and the genes he was born with, making him not in control of the actions he did. Should he be judged or forgiven because he was just born this way? In my opinion he should be judged to be put as an example to others who may do the same wrong actions, preventing them from doing the same mistakes, but if an afterlife exists he shouldn’t be judged, as it wasn’t his choice to be born this way.

On the course of history, humans have created tools and objects to ease their way of life, but why create to replace others? Humans created silk machines that can net silk more efficient and better than humans that it drove humans out of netting silk themselves. The need to evolve is important, so humans create what makes their creative process go into other fields to also create other tools and automate. and the question still stands why create to replace other humans? Perhaps greed as some would say. but i think more importantly it is the need to recreate what god can create. The need to be godly and virtues as god made humans seek ultimate power. god created us, could control us, and could terminate us. New Automate has the same features for us. though we mightn’t seem to have full control over it, but still it feels like it is our slave. It does whatever we want whenever we want it to happen, which fulfills the purpose of an automate but not really humanly possible. We keep looking forward might happen. what we could create in the future. maybe we could become like gods. maybe they would destroy us just like Zeus did to his father. the long to be god like is still pending, yet very anticipated from the human kind in the future.

As the chapter of artificial life and the homunculus states, almost all the views and beliefs of reproduction were centered around men and sperm since they were thought to be superior to women who were viewed as “deformed humans”. Such views were popular and influential to the extent that myths and stories narrate men attempts, and sometimes success, in reproducing without mating with women; a thought we consider impossible scientifically and ridiculous socially. However, it is really weird and interesting that people in the past had such perspectives while their real life was totally different. Women were and still are the ones who get pregnant and give birth. They also traditionally feed their babies and raise them for years. Perhaps, these stories came from the desire of men to give birth as women, a feature they lack, or to imitate God in creating creatures without any help. Nevertheless, I am still wondering how Aristotle and others consider themselves to be perfect while they had been created inside imperfect and deformed bodies.

It’s very interesting to  think about how people always want to test their limits in any way, namely in how they try to play the role of God. That is, of course, in terms of creation. Scientists are always trying to create the closest thing to the most complex of beings that God has created; a human. In that sense, they always want to have something to have more power over, just as God has power over us. And even though that power may be unattainable, we still want to have that same power He has, and that’s why we always try to find ways, through alchemy, for example, to achieve that or the closest thing to it. It feels a lot like greed, though, that we always want more and are never satisfied with whatever power we may have – we always want more, we always want to be more superior than we make ourselves to be. We are always trying to go beyond whatever limits we have because the idea of being limited in any way is the most unappealing thing to us as humans.

People used to call anyone who was able to make a breakthrough in any field of science as a sorcerer and it was labeled as an evil thing or a demonic process. Maybe “sorcerers” were actually scientists but people were too ignorant so they called them sorcerers instead of calling them smart. Maybe this kind of knowledge was preserved and only certain people were allowed access as knowledge is power and may be dangerous in the wrong hands, a modern example of this is Noble’s dynamite which was invented to benefit people and make mining for minerals easier and then was used in warfare to kill people.

In earlier readings, we explored the idea of humans basically being god’s Automata on earth, programmed to serve without having the control we think we have. That was a really interesting idea regardless of the fact that no religion would want you to think of it that way for obvious reasons. and since religions remain a taboo subject, stories about Automata usually involves humans inventing machines/ creatures with the ultimate goal of making it function as a human being. However, the thing i want to focus on is something mentioned in “Enlightened Automata” which is how nowadays with all the technological advancement, we are leaning toward trying to mick the performance of the machinery instead. Schaffer raises the question of whether the worker operating a machine in a factory with following certain movements without understanding the mechanism behind it is any more intelligent than the machine he is operating? whether the soldiers being ordered to kill in battles sometimes without having a say or understanding why are any more free than a slavery machine? Isn’t that why we build machines? for labor. doesn’t the word robot means slave for human? what about the humans who are slaves for humans?

Just like machines wouldn’t exist without humans, we are at a time when we can not imagine our lives without machines. and even though we can argue that the factory worker have the mental potentials to learn the mechanism of operating a machine and the soldier must’ve had a choice of joining the forces or not at some point, The reality says something else.

In countries with huge populations like China, we can see them in schools treating kids like literal robots, expecting a certain performance with a certain quality done in specific time which is similar among all students. Of course this is done with the “intentions” to prevent chaos but it ends up programming robots.

After in-depth examination of different cultures from all over the world, one can deduce the similarities between the past and the present regardless today’s advances. For instance, ancient automata focused mainly on fulfilling personal desires such as sex, entertainment and torturing; and all these desires still exist in human’s nature with different proportions and they strive to satisfy their wants regardless the method used. After looking closely for example on the “Brazen Bull” this inhumane way of torturing people, we can easily compare it with the lethal injection method of execution where people actually suffer a lot before dying and they witness and feel their body organs shutting down bit by bit.

Another incident that highlights a great similarity between the past and the future is that ” an inventor is killed by his own invention”, this quote was said when Perilaus the manufacturer of the bronze bull was tortured in it. This actually happens nowadays when countries invent weapons and start trading them with other countries; eventually one day these buyers will start turning their backs on the inventors and fight them back.

As I was reading this chapter, I found Paracelsus’s way of thinking extremely strange. This probably relates to the fact that I am a very science oriented person, and the way he explained the occurrence of life seemed very illogical to me. How could life come from Art? Is there really such thing as Palingenesis? Nonetheless, now that I have come to think about it, maybe Paracelsus’s pursue in finding a way to life without fertilisation is due to his lack of interest in females, which could be related to his inter-sexuality. In other words, maybe he did not feel a sense of attraction towards females as he was slightly feminine himself. Consequently, he started thinking of the application of alchemy, and how the male sperm can give the spark of life alone, without an egg. In my opinion, including women in the process of making life was highly despised in the 17th century due to their menstrual blood, and what it symbolises. Menstrual blood was a sign of impurity, as it represents the death of what could have been alive; an ovum that could have been fertilised, but was not. Therefore, Paracelsus, and many other scholars like him, starting incubating the sperm and putting it in structures such as the womb of a horse (female body replacement), and essentially creating artificial life in the form of homunculus. Paracelsus’s theory might seem crazy and unrealistic to many. However, what those people fail to understand, me being previously one of them, is that life in the 21st generally can be generated with 1 sex only, such as the case for homosexual couples, yet I don’t see anyone doubting the ethics or principle behind the procedure, especially since it is very similar to Promotheus’s artificial life.

Prometheus, the Titan who “championed early humans” , and the main benefactor of humankind is quite intriguing. For he showed concern for his own creations, and felt that he must protect them from what might come later on, and thus stole fire from the gods and gave it to us as if through the breath of life. This sort of attachment to your creation is not unusual, it has been expressed through different ways; for example, in actions mimicking acts of lust and such, with automata or even statues. Pygmalion’s ivory lady, Galatea, the subject of his agalmatophilia, reminded me of the current Japanese craze, the “waifu” body pillows, and plastic sex dolls. These creations feed these lonely/misunderstood/weak people’s needs throughout the years, and in a way it is a show of power on a lifeless (or is it just powerless?) creation.  However, these more carnal interests would drag us into an ethical whirlwind and we would have to look at such creations, if they truly have a soul or not? If they gain more “human” characteristics, are they becoming more human? I would like to call this a question of “consensuality”; where you create statues, give them life and sensuality through skill, mechanisms, or electricity and then use them for your own pleasure without their consent. But, what if s/he does not consent? Is it statue-ry rape?

But even when it gains some elements of humanity, it truly does not become human. For it does not age, and thus we enter into the miasma of aging and decay, not to mention the issue of timelessness becoming a crucial aspect that almost challenges these “masters” idea of power and makes them realize that the tables have turned, for these timeless figurines can live forever and preserve their beauty and sensuality as the “masters” wither and die. This becomes more of an issue the more real this lust-doll looks and feels. The real-er it is, the more confusing reality becomes, and that’s when the mind games go full-on crazy. The realism of such dolls is also a show of craftsmanship, skill and talent, and the fact that it affects other humans in such ways, may be a show of power by the creator.

The more skilled the creator is = the more realistic a doll becomes = the more disillusioned the user is = the more inflated the creator’s ego becomes.

This makes us go through a power cycle and it just never ends.

This makes one think, what makes humans human? With these huge leaps in technology, soon we will be misjudging robot for human and vice-versa. Is it the soul? Does this include free-will? With AI, we can have robots/automata with certain behaviours and would act differently than each other, taking different paths, is that then free-will?

I remember this text very well despite reading it almost 2 weeks ago, as it was the first reading of this class. It was this text that gave me an idea of the course’s content, a topic that I never studied before. Nonetheless, I found myself to be greatly interested by what I was reading and what was discussed in class, as there were several ideas that never crossed my mind. For instance, I never thought about why artificial life could be created, or the ancient myths that describe the formation of the body and soul. Through this chapter, I discovered that the ancient Greeks believed Prometheus to be the creator of the human race, as he built the human body using clay and dust. To give the clay figures life, Athena would blow into them and make use of the wind to create their soul. The creation process of the human body in the Greek mythology brought my attention to the presence of a role reversal; the woman is supposed to be the one building the body, as she normally does inside the womb, not the man. Does the myth exist in this particular way due to the men’s inability of creating life organically? Furthermore, this chapter also gave several examples of nude statues that were used for sex, by both men and women. For example, Laodamia, a Greek whose husband died in a Trojan war, created a gold statue of her husband to which she showed affection to compensate for his loss. Unfortunately, Laodamia ended up killing herself when the statue was destroyed, and therefore demonstrating the type of relationship that she established with a statue. This notified me of the possibility of having current cyber-sexbot technologies derived from the idea of using statues for sexual pleasure. Also, when Prometheus introduced the idea of building human being structures from the inside out, giving them bones and a skeleton, these newly developed automata started mimicking human actions, such as doing labour and providing entertainment. As technology advanced and improved, these soulless machines become closer and closer to humans, in terms of their appearance and actions. Using this train of thought, does that make humans the automata of the work of God?