Abstract

The metaphor of machine has been very fertile throughout modernity: it served not only to think but also to design strategies for intervening objects as diverse as cities and the solar system, going through such basic institutions as the school or the factory. The human body also was caught in this movement that insists on identifying all life with some sort of mechanism. Even though that gesture has remained current since the beginning of industrialism, it has suffered significant alterations, especially in recent decades. We will attempt to unravel some senses of the historical transformations that are reconfiguring the fusion of life and machines, in synch with the rapid advances of digital technology.