ABSTRACT
Framed around twenty-first-century anxieties regarding automation and artificial intelligence, this chapter argues for moving beyond the dualism of humans and technology in favor of a consideration of aesthetic dealings with machines and technology. Koch considers the visual appeal of machines from the nineteenth century onward, as well as the human body as the interface of communication with technology. In the process, Koch offers the possibility of a discourse centered less on human obsolescence than on a human-machine dialectic, whether revealing the productive or the destructive side of technology. The chapter considers a variety of examples from political economy, philosophy of technology, literature, film, and contemporary art, all of which invite a reassessment of human-machine interrelation.
