U as reversal_artefficient intelligence

Marx had good reason to stress the great fluidity of the con-
nection between segments in manual labor. This connection ap-
pears to the factory worker on an assembly line in an independent,
objectified form. Independently of the worker's volition, the
article being worked on comes within his range of action and
moves away from him just as arbitrarily. "It is a common char-
acteristic of all capitalist production ... ," wrote Marx, "that
the worker does not make use of the working conditions. The
working conditions make use of the worker; but it takes machin-
ery to give this reversal a technically concrete form." In working
with machines, workers learn to co-ordinate "their own move-
ments with the uniformly constant movements of an automaton."
These words shed a peculiar light on the absurd kind of uni-
formity with which Poe wants to saddle the crowd-uniformities
of attire and behavior, but also a uniformity of facial expression.


The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way
that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move
of an opponent with a countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire
and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on
a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this
table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback
who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the pup-
pet's hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical
counterpart to this device. The puppet called "historical mate-
rialism" is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone
if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know,
is wizened and has to keep out of sight.

[W.Benjamin, Illuminations]