In the early 18th century, with the invention of Watt's steam engine began a slow transition in parts of Europe previously manual labor and draft-animal–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. With the complete mechanization of the textile industries began so called the 'Industrial Revolution'. In this time of history the European society started transforming, there was an emergence of a new labor class. The understanding of life was more mechanistic by which mind was viewed separated from the body.
Babbage constructed not merely a political economic theory of machines, but also an ontology, an understanding of reality prior to machines, humans, and the economy, and, indeed, prior to both history and nature.He reconceived the mechanical as a political ontological category prior to historical and economic reality.Babbage and Ure center their representations of the factory on representations of machinery; for both, the machine is a means of disciplining labor, and the factory an assemblage of such machines. Babbage writes: "One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents"
Mechanized factory labor tends to make itself obsolete, assuming a steady demand for, and a steady value of, goods. The problem of discipline becomes centered on leisure rather than labor to the extent that labor can produce enough leisure to make itself mostly obsolete.
Babbage’s definition of intelligence is the combination of memory and foresight. According to Babbage the owner of an article is the person who designs rather than a person who crafts it. It can be seen when Babbage laid claims to owning the means of production, while his engineer thought he could make more calculating engines if they went into production. In Babbage own words on the 'Calculating engine':
For Babbage, the division of labor also allows each task to be divided up into subtasks that require different levels of skill, so that no one labors beneath his or her level of skill.Babbage sees in the division of labor the possibility of an inclusive distribution of skill that incorporates all varieties of workers into the factory, For Babbage, the calculability and the mechanical quality of both humans and machines are merely instances of the calculability and the mechanical quality of the universe itself.Babbage's most famous project, his attempt to build a "calculating engine," relied on such a conception of the calculable and rule-governed nature of reality. Babbage hoped this engine would mechanically produce and print logarithmic and other mathematical tables (used at the time, for example, in navigation, astronomy,and surveying).
"One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents"
By this he makes a worker in a factory a 'slave of the machine', while factory represent 'admirable adaptations of human skill and intelligence' where we see 'the triumph of mind over matter'. Babbage puts machines between the mind and body, as the workers(body) are its slave while mind triumphs over machine.
BY: D .chaitanya kumar( EE09B084)
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