Case School of Applied Science Commencement

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Case School of Applied Science
lA.. ~CJI... \ ~'- t.tk- 9- .A Commencement Address
May 27, 1926
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MEN .AND ltACHINES
uM.J . t.:wr- • f-Uu/).t. -~ • i.,l,,_I" • - - - - ~ ~ Readers of Samuel Butl~r's humorous and satirical comments on modern
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civilization need not be told that there is alw~s a germ of truth underlying
an.y idea of his, however grotesque. I propose today to s~ a few words about
. jI;. JJ.,r' his fantastic theory of the danger of the human race being s\lJlerseded by
~~,Y> : ,.;' machines in the control of the earth. This theory is the subject of a very
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interesting article in the YALE REVIEW of October, 1922 , and it is deserving
of all the notice it has ever received.
Nothing cou1d be more delightfUl than Butler's description of the
"evolution" of machines. He points out that the development of machines runs
parallel to that of animals in a great man.y wSffs . Progress has been from
larger to smaller sizes and from simplicity to complexity . Machines have
developed the capacity to consume food and to gi ve out energy on exactly the
same chEmical principles as the human bod,y . The evolution of machines has
conformed to a rigid rule of the surn val of the fittest, and classes of
machines m8ff be divided into genera and speci es. The higher forms are already,
as he points out, developing something strikingly reSEmbling a rudimentar-y
co. nsciousness (one thinks instantly of ships guided by radio or of John Hays
Hammond, Jr .~ s mechanical dog which will follow a beam of light about a room) .
Calculating mQ.v~ and slide rules are already usurping certain functions
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of human thought .
Machines are even developing some kind of faculty of reproduction in that
one machine is produced l:rr another. It is true that they are dependent on man's