Philosophy, Image and the Mirror of Machine

What, exactly, is the relationship between the machines we can build and the world we can represent?If technology is one of the ways in which the human being interacts with the world, and if machines are the instruments of this technological agency, then the self–same machines can also be viewed as modes, forms, even as symbols of human expression; in a word, as something which reflects our image and projects it onto the world. In this perspective, machines are considered an expression of the human being’s thinking and agency. This, precisely, is the reason why humanity is able to reflect itself in machines, that is to say, to better understand its own nature through the machines it is capable of producing and putting to use. From this point of view, machines are images which have to be decoded: images of what the human being is and wants to be. Bearing these features in mind, we could attempt to write a history of machines. The plough, the clock, the steam engine, the car, the computer: all can be viewed as increasingly complex examples of what the human being does and is. Each instrument corresponds to an image of the human being and of the world. It is precisely this image that is reflected and objectified in machines.The paper will discuss this matter from a philosophical point of view.