In 1957, an average farmed chicken reached a weight of 905g after 56 days. It was then considered adult and fit to be eaten. 65 years later, the same chicken aged 56 days exceeds 4kg. But few reach this size: in practice, they are slaughtered after 35 days, after reaching 2.2kg.
These remarkable statistics often serve as rallying points for animal rights activists, highlighting the cramped conditions and health issues faced by battery-farmed chickens. While the welfare of animals is undoubtedly important, our focus in this blog series lies elsewhere. We are interested in the underlying order of things—the inexorable chain of cause and effect. This chicken serves as our entry point into the realm of the Machine ; it is an example of Leibniz's prescient observation: every machine implies machines of machines.
Ironically, our engineered chicken's excessive weight brings with it reduced mobility and shortened lifespan, mirroring issues seen in overweight humans. However, the causal relationship is inverted: for the chicken, death is not a consequence of its condition, but rather the very purpose of its accelerated growth and restricted movement. The chicken's brief existence is but a transient phase in a vast process designed to feed humanity. Though merely an early link in a complex food chain, this chicken represents a remarkable feat of engineering—or rather, a remarkable cascade of engineering marvels.
Phenotypic selection, a process that humans have mastered for thousands of years, is necessary but far from sufficient to achieve this result. The food and pharmaceutical industries play an instrumental role in feeding chickens and preventing them from dying from bacterial or viral infections that are common in very dense and confined populations. The biology of this chicken is controlled at a molecular level.
The chicken's journey from egg to plate involves a network of highly sophisticated, often automated infrastructures, all part of a meticulously orchestrated supply chain. This process is further governed by regulatory standards set by various authorities, overseeing every step of the chicken's progress through the system even after it's been plucked and processed.
Scientific protocols, automated production, algorithmic decision-making, and precision logistics represents a mechanistic process of breathtaking complexity. Its ultimate goal is to maximize protein mass as a function of time. Herein lies the true genius of our species: not merely in producing a 2kg chicken in a month, but in our capacity to reduce the living, breathing gallus gallus domesticus to these two abstract variables - mass and time. In our analysis of the triumphs and limitations of the Machine, abstraction will necessarily be a central theme.
Focusing on specific machines such as those described above, however numerous they may be in the system, limits the analysis to the question of “how?”. Addressing the question of "why?" is a more ambitious undertaking. As we work through this question, overarching “general machines” emerge. These general machines convert the illusion of needing to prevent randomness (through accumulation, optimization, planning, norms, or standards) into fuel for specific machines. The chicken grew enormous not just because humans believed it was technically feasible, but primarily because they felt that it was necessary. General machines transcend the framework of cause and effect. The "why" of our giant chicken lies at the intersection of the Financial Machine and the State Machine.
General machines prompt us to question the comfort humans derive from numbers representing quantities as abstract as space, energy, or time. All our machines, whether general or specific, ultimately reflect our relationship with these three concepts and our obsession with controlling them. Through technological progress, we have managed to escape the natural order of things, and our control now extends from the infinitely large to the infinitely small.
The ballet of our machines inside finely-tuned systems captivates us as much as it serves us. We nurture the Machine like a tree, marveling at its growth until it can sustain itself. As it grows, its roots delve and branch endlessly, solidifying the ground we stand on -leaving less and less space for chaos -in many invisible ways. The pattern is always the same : specialized machines, the roots, form the foundations of the general machine, reinforcing its structure. Above our heads, a canopy offers a protection we've grown to appreciate. Because the general machine reflects our own genius, we can easily delude ourselves that the value of the tree does not lie in its wood but instead in its shade. We harbor the illusion that we can shape the tree by pruning unwieldy branches, yet with each passing season, we find ourselves dominated again. Once out of our control, we'll come to admire its majesty. In a sense, we become slaves of the slave (as Baudelaire might add, "and a stream in the sewer"1), and this tree metaphor prepares us for the emergence of bureaucracies.
The good news is that, as the adage goes, trees don't grow to the sky. Eventually, the law of diminishing returns and Parkinson's law come into play, which we will try to illustrate across several domains.
The bad news is that trees inevitably fall. We'll find similar cautionary notes throughout history in the works of those who have attempted to formulate a theory of the Machine based on the technical knowledge of their time. The Machine —as an instrument for controlling entropy in its various forms —has captivated thinkers since antiquity.
In his seminal work on cybernetics —the theory of control and communication in animals and machines —Norbert Wiener evokes figures like Daedalus and Hero of Alexandria2, the latter known for his treatise on pneumatics and steam engine inventions. Wiener also brings up Leibniz, whose monad becomes overwhelmed when inundated with information, rendering it incapable of perception.
Wiener observes that our relationship with the Machine forms a crucial pillar of modern philosophy, albeit it is rarely recognized as such. Any contemporary attempt to grasp the nature of the Machine necessarily leads to revisit numerous works, some visionary, from both scientific and philosophical perspectives.
In this series of articles, our objective is not to merely catalogue the myriad of manifestations of the Machine. We look to analyze its nature, exploring both specific machines of all shapes and forms, and the overarching general machines that define our systems and societies. We stand on the shoulders of many generations of thinkers who have already tackled this very topic. This persistent inquiry may be one of the most defining characteristics of our species, the origin of our innate curiosity, our capacity for innovation and our constant desire to push the boundaries of what's possible.
