Engines Within
Yesterday’s post looked at Talos whose immense power depended on divine ichor sealed in a single vein. These beings were not ambassadors for the gods but imagined as self contained, their power and motion arising internally. That hidden energy source was the secret of Talos’ autonomy and his fatal flaw. Other myths carried the same idea: Daedalus’ moving statues implied a spark locked inside, while Hero of Alexandria’s devices ran on concealed pneumatics, water, and weights. Each embodied the dream of complete autonomy contained within, brilliant but flawed, a dream still pursued in today’s efforts to build autonomous machines.
