"bionic entities needing compassion"

FALCONBOT by dam

The only difference between the Disney world and the Cartesian view is that Descartes had an old-fashioned suspicion that machines were things not beings, while the futurist premise is not only that animals (and we ourselves) are machines but that machines are beings. It is not only a conflict between living tissue and springs or circuits but a world composed entirely of cyborg or bionic entities needing compassion. That supposition is not really new. Beneath it lurks the same old assumption that the world and life are made, not grown, that technique is the key. The futurists think of the extremely improbably performance of two and a half billion years of our genesis as if it were a fabrication, a making. To this, Romain Gary replies, "In an entirely man-made world, there can be no room for man either. All that will be left of us are robots. We are not and could never be our own creation. We are forever condemned to be a part of a mystery that neither logic nor imagination can fathom."

…from: The Others: How Animals Made Us Human by Paul Shepard, p. 283.

I'm reading and enjoying Shepard's book, although enjoying may not be the most accurate verb. Beautifully written, his book teases out and pulls together more threads of animals in myth, literature, religion, than any other. And, it challenges many of the notions I've formed about humans and nonhumans. In response, I'm preparing a series of blog posts to address several of his most intriguing concepts, so stay tuned.