Brief Digression of Machines in contemporary culture and society

Nowadays machines are a fundamental part of our lives and our world. If I try to imagine a world without machines, the scenario would be a catastrophe. Some films deal with this concept and show these scenarios, picturing them as a true disaster for human beings. Moreover, we have become dependent on technologies and machines at a huge and ever-increasing level.

On the other hand, the presence of machines in our daily life should not be satanized. Some people legitimately think that machines should not invade the human essence, but we have to admit that our lives are completely different with the aid of machines. We are now far from the times of the Industrial revolution, where even violent attacks against the factories occurred, but there are some persons that still consider machines have negative influence, or that they are not natural.

First of all, we should recognize that in nature there are elements that seem perfect machines. The human body, rivers flow, oxygen purification, plants, etc. But it is the human mind the creator of machines. Machines are born in our imagination and in our subconsciously desire to imitate nature. Besides, machines expand our limits and make us reach superior levels, in terms of: velocity, strengths, storage, specificy, equal production, among others. 

Of course the development of machines is not a task for everyone out there. The production of a safe, resilient and useful machines is, in almost of the cases, the product of years of study of people devoted to different sciences and engineering branches.

I personally chose, a couple of years ago, to study chemical engineering. It is a very unique field, where a lot of different sciences are combined. The actual name of my study path should be "process engineering", because we mainly deal with different processes each day, we address the transformation of materials (raw) into final useful products. The transformation of matter from one state to another implies, at practical level, the use of machines. In my field, not only chemical reactors are used, but also heat exchangers, compressors, tanks, pumps, fermenters, filters, electronic controllers, sensors, mixers and they are all specific machines that can be put to work together for the wanted process. It does not matter if your profession is related to them because our daily lives are    related to machines in a very tight way. From transportation (e.g. bus, cars, trucks, bicycles), groceries (transportation and production), communication (cellphones, phones, computers, faxes, printers) to housing (construction machines, asphalt paver) we are truly overwhelmed by machines and we must understand the role of them in our society.

It is also interesting to note that the new generations, that are born during the recent years (the so called Digital Native), are used to integrate technologies in their lives easier and they require less time adapt their habits to them. Furthermore, our brains are already programmed to find solutions with the aid of machines. In a previous post, I mentioned an idea that correlates machines and art. Since they have touched every aspect of our lives, art was not the exception.

The third stroke of the Industrial Revolution (the Digital Revolution) changed the way in which people were related to machines. Machines this time were aimed at arriving directly to the masses, they were not supposed to be controlled by an oligarchy or to produce weapons. The result of this revolution is the Information Age, that we are living now. This era is characterized by the strong presence of computers connected through the net and the real globalization of the world.