People sometimes believe that machines are something humans invented recently, but the truth is that they have existed, at least, since the Greek period, and perhaps since before. Machines are the sign of human intelligence (and willing), and from a Brother sewing machine, to a pasta machine or a popcorn machine, all of them express the human will for doing something easier. Of course the machines in Greece two thousand years ago used human power to function. Electricity was a well-known phenomenon; the word ‘electron’ comes from those early years. But that phenomenon was neither a thing that till Testla and Volt and the other big heads from the last two centuries, nobody could explain nor less control. Archaeologists have found at the Mediterranean Sea some kind of primitive big ‘batteries’, but they ignore their use.
Thus machines have in common the human intention to ease some of our daily activities, and sometimes the machines take on these activities pretty good, so that we can let the digital answering machine take those phone calls for us, while we are doing some other things. The fax machine has revolutioned the office as it was introduced, back then in the early 80's, in the first enterprises. The time it has helped to spare was time used to increase production, and economic growth during those years has a lot to do with that kind of innovations.
Every machine is a tool, so, they share with a hammer or a fork the essence of every tool, that is, to accomplish some determinate task. You can do a lot of things whit a fork, but it has been created for a precise need. A pinball machine has no other use, but the entertainment, the beeps, the lights, the sirens, the nice metallic ball, shining like a spark every time it gets beaten...
