Automatism

“ Where is the intricate and at one time difficult art in which perfect automatic ease has been reached except as the result of long practice? If, then, wherever we can trace the development of automatism we find it to have taken this course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken the same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken? ”

“ But that which does require explanation from automatists is why automatism should have become associated with consciousness, and this so intimately that every change in the sequence A, B, C, &c., is accompanied by a particular and corresponding change in the sequence a, b, c, &c. ”

“ The next higher grade of motor automatism, involving considerable subconscious action of intelligence, is found in the various alphabet using forms of amateur mediumship, such as table tipping, the 'Ouija-board,' and certain other devices for making our muscles leaky and liable to escape from control.
'Graphic' automatisms, of which planchette-writing is the most popularly known example, is a more widespread accomplishment than ordinary people think. ”

“ In most cases of fully-developed automatism known to me the automatist reads what comes, and makes suitable oral replies or comments to the sentences as they appear: so that the whole has then the effect of a straightforward conversation of which one side is spoken and the other written—the speaking side being usually rather silent and reserved, the writing side free and expansive.
Naturally not every person has the power of cultivating this simple form of what is technically known as motor automatism, one of the recognised subliminal forms of activity ”

“ On the other hand, if the attention is fixed on the end or on any particular part of a given action, and the other component parts of the action are performed unconsciously, the automatism may be called relative. ”

“ They make us machines, committed forever to a determined manner of acting and thinking. A habit is itself a mental bias. Stereotyped and inherited, it becomes instinct, where we see the full fruition of the involution movement and the dead level of automatism. ”

“ Now, as I have said, the great majority of the nunciative or message-bearing motor automatisms originate in the automatist's own mind, and do not involve the exercise of telepathy or telæsthesia, or any other supernormal faculty ”

“ It is obvious that this store of working habits, mental and physical automatisms, must be acquired as early and as correctly as possible, so that the essentials of education shall be abundant, varied and precise; and then we may combine and elaborate them as we grow in age and facility. "When the time comes to specialize in any direction we have need for an equipment in all the simpler automatisms, that we may group them unhesitatingly to form the basis of our later adaptations. ”

“ By automatic we mean an action taking place of itself. I dare say most of you have seen automata of one kind or another, such as children's toys and more elaborate pieces of mechanism, which, being wound up with a spring, and containing a complicated series of wheels and levers, execute a variety of movements. In each of the Great Exhibitions there have been very curious automata of this kind. We speak, then, of the actions being "automatic," when we mean that they take place of themselves, without any direction on our own parts ”

“ There were neither planing, slotting, nor shaping machines, and with the exception of very imperfect lathes and a few drills, the preparatory operations of construction were effected entirely by the hands of the workmen. Now, everything is done by machine tools, with a degree of accuracy which the unaided hand could never accomplish. The automaton, or self-acting, machine tool has within itself an almost creative power; in fact, so great are its powers of adaptation, that there is no operation of the human hand that it does not imitate. ”

“ Therefore, since from the moment that the nature of the calculation to be executed or of the problem to be resolved have been indicated to it, the machine is, by its own intrinsic power, of itself to go through all the intermediate operations which lead to the proposed result, it must exclude all methods of trial and guess-work, and can only admit the direct processes of calculation [4] .
It is necessarily thus; for the machine is not a thinking being, but simply an automaton which acts according to the laws imposed upon it. ”

“ G.O.D. wants us to remain mere machines to the end of our days. We were created to serve and to make money for the Company, and for no other purpose. Do you want to go on being a machine to the end of your days, 8M? That is what you are, you know, for all the illusions you may sometimes have of being human. A peripatetic apotheosis of automation pretending to be a man. You're not a man, 8M—any more than I, up until a few hours ago, was a woman. ”

“ Probably the foremost problem which machines that think can solve is automatic control over all sorts of other machines. This involves controlling a machine that is running so that it will do the right thing at the right time in response to information. For example, suppose that you are mowing a lawn with a mowing machine. ”

“ Brain: "My course of action is prescribed by that state of the world's affairs at this present time; it is quite clear and obvious: In the face of the manifest human inadequacy to manage the world's affairs my first objective must be to develop my motoric organs to a point where I can bring all the essential production machinery under my control. My second objective must be to achieve auto-procreation through the full automatization of all fabrication processes which are essential to my existence. ”

“ Description of An Automaton.—This is a machine, so constructed by means of weights, levers, springs, wheels, &c. as to move for a considerable time, as if it were endued with animal life. According to this definition, clocks, watches, and all machines of that kind, may be ranked as a species of automata. But the word is most commonly applied to such machines as are made in the form of men and other animals, at the same time that their internal machinery is so contrived, that they seem voluntarily to act like the animals they represent. ”

“ In this respect, all kinds of clocks and watches, planetariums, common and smoke jacks, with a vast number of the machines now employed in our cotton, silk, flax, and wool factories, as well as in our dyeing and calico printing works, may be denominated automatic. But the term, automaton, is, in common language, appropriated to that class of mechanical artifices in which the purposely concealed power is made to imitate the arbitrary or voluntary motions of living beings. Human figures, of this kind, are sometimes styled Androides, from the Greek term, like a man. ”

“ But this merely shows that the purpose exhibited in the machine’s construction originated outside the machine itself, and that the originator had not the power to carry out his purpose with complete consistency. It does not in the least detract from the essentially teleological and purposive character of the machine quà machine.
This brings us to our second point. Just as no true machine is purposeless, so no true machine is self-acting. Not only are all machines in the end the product of designing intelligence, but all machines are dependent upon external purposive intelligence for control. ”

“ In the long term, the issues of fully autonomous production, refurbishing of patterns and molds, automatic process control systems, and the application of robotics and other advanced automation techniques to casting technology, must all be addressed. ”

“ For some strange reason, few of us become alarmed at the news of a computer solving complex mathematics, translating a book, or processing millions of checks daily, but the idea of a computer controlling a factory stimulates union reprisals, editorials in the press against automation, and much general breast-beating and soul-searching. Perversely we do not seem to mind the computer’s thinking as much as we do its overt action. ”

“ In this study, cognition and learning refer to the development of a machine intelligence capable of dealing with new facts, unexpected events, and contradictory information in novel situations. Many potential applications of advanced automation require a level of adaptive flexibility that is unavailable with present technology. Today's automatic computer-controlled machines handle new data by a method or approach programmed into them when they were developed. ”

“ The two characteristics here brought out in the machine, complexity of action and self-direction or automatic character, are in reality the objective and subjective expression of the same factor—namely, the changed relation of man towards the work in which he co-operates.
Some of the directing or mental effort, skill, art, thought, must be taken over, that is to say, some of the processes must be guided not directly by man but by other processes, in order to constitute a machine. ”

“ It is in their totality, in their combination that they surpass all human faculties."
Lee: "How about thought, the most important of all human qualities?"
Brain: "How about me, The Brain?"
Lee: "Okay, okay. But that still leaves out that most important human faculty—the faculty of auto-procreation. Machines don't procreate you know."
Brain: "You don't say. Isn't it true that modern technology goes in the direction of automatization? Isn't it true that even today we have whole industries which are procreating products 100% automatically; be it light bulbs or motor car frames or rayon thread. ”

“ The energy which perfects a time-saving machine will not be content to sit afterwards with folded hands and see it work. Attention, but of a more intellectual kind, and labour, but of a more skilled character, must be given even to the machine-work which is most automatous; and new branches of industry open out in unexpected directions as the fruits of inventive talent. Besides which, facility of production leads to a larger quantity of the particular object made being produced and used ”

“ As soon as a machine executes, without man’s help, all the movements requisite to elaborate the raw material, needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic system of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant improvement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatus that stops a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks, and the self-acting stop, that stops the power-loom so soon as the shuttle bobbin is emptied of weft, are quite modern inventions. ”

“ Nothing has been written on this topic which can be considered as decisive--and accordingly we find every where men of mechanical genius, of great general acuteness, and discriminative understanding, who make no scruple in pronouncing the Automaton a pure machine, unconnected with human agency in its movements, and consequently, beyond all comparison, the most astonishing of the inventions of mankind. ”

“ I have been since years planning self-controlled automata and believe that mechanisms can be produced which will act as if possest of reason, to a limited degree, and will create a revolution in many commercial and industrial departments.
I was about twelve years old when I first succeeded in banishing an image from my vision by wilful effort, but I never had any control over the flashes of light to which I have referred. ”

“ She must take her measures from life, not books. Nor would I have the sewing done with machines, unless those of the highest cost could be procured and ably superintended. The best machine is as yet a poor substitute for the supple, human [243] hand; and many practical inconveniences must result from its use. It requires more skill and intelligence to manage man's simplest machine, than to control with a thought that complicated network of nerve, bone, and fibre which we have been accustomed to use.
Capital to start such an establishment as I refer to is all that is needed. ”

“ Another large group of problems for which we can foresee the use of machines that think is found in business and economics.
For example, consider production scheduling in a business or a factory. The machine takes in a description of each order received by the business and a description of its relative urgency. The machine knows (that is, has in its memory) how much of each kind of raw material is needed to fill the order and what equipment and manpower are needed to produce it. ”

“ Evidently the automaton should respond only to an individual call, as a person responds to a name. Such considerations led me to conclude that the sensitive device of the machine should correspond to the ear rather than the eye of a human being, for in this case its actions could be controlled irrespective of intervening obstacles, regardless of its position relative to the distant controlling apparatus, and, last, but not least, it would remain deaf and unresponsive, like a faithful servant, to all calls but that of its master. ”

“ To serve mankind. The most immediate, urgent impetus for the development of automation and machine replicative techniques is to improve, protect, and increase the productivity of human society. One way of achieving the goal of human preservation and improvement is to make our mechanical creations intelligent, so that they can automatically do what is good for us. ”

“ There is small hardship in the natural selection by new laborers of the employments where they are most needed, and there is often little in a transfer of a person who has tended a machine of one kind to a machine of a different kind. Instances there still are of manual skill brought to naught by the invention of a mechanical automaton that does the work more rapidly and accurately than the hand of man can do it ”