The Bird and The Machine

The Bird and the Machine by Loren Eisley

"The Bird and the Machine" is an essay by Loren Eisley about the inhuman nature of technology. He makes a claim that, even if we can get a machine to replicate the human body- or any other body- exactly, it will not be quite human. It won't be alive. It lacks the necessary emotions and thoughts that make up a living creature. He says that, even if we can manufacture a machine that is exactly like a living creature, it won't be the same. He claims that technology is inferior to biology.

Quotes:
 "This is the great age, make no mistake about it; the robot has been born somewhat appropriately along with the atomic bomb, and the brain they say is just another type of more complicated feedback system."(Eisley601)

This quote is very interesting because it illustrates how the "great age" has come at the price of devaluing organic, human life.

 "I have no doubt it can be done, though a mouse harvesting seeds on an autumn thistle is to me a more fine sight and more complicated, I think, in his multiform activity, than a machine "mouse" running a maze."(Eisley602)

This is interesting because the author makes the claim that it is far more complicated for a living mouse to get seeds than a machine mouse. Most of the time, we look at it as being the other way around.

"Ah, my mind takes up, on the other hand the machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird. Far off, over a distance greater than space, that remote cry from the heart of heaven makes a faint buzzing among my breakfast dishes and passes on and away."(Eisley607)

This is the passage Eisley ends his article on. I found it very interesting because it tied his claim to his story of the birds in a very powerful way.

Questions:

"I had all the information I needed just like any skilled assassin... I had a professional assassin's reputation to keep up...An assassin has to get used to these things. I had a professional reputation to keep up."(Eisley605-606)

What does he mean by "assassin"? Why does he keep referring to himself as an assassin?

"I quit looking into that eye and managed to get my huge carcass with its fist full of prey back down the ladder."(Eisley605)

Why does he refer to his body as a "huge carcass"?

Eisley, Loren. "The Bird and the Machine". The Immense Journey. 1957