@bbowman True, but the machine-based metaphors for the human mind and (especially) body have been around since Descartes, and the latter were common in 19th-century medicine. I've been trying for several years to stop using them, but there's a lot of digging needed to uproot them!
@dwalbert very true! perhaps we could say that the computer is the crowning metaphor of Technopoly - the realization of a dream that's been in the works for centuries
@bbowman Maybe so, though I hate to be so optimistic as to think there isn't something more totalizing coming next. Although again—it has struck me that "artificial intelligence" largely mimics a model of human intelligence that is itself based on machines—because it must, because the people developing it have no other model to work from.