Man + machine = BFF

"The machines, products of man's mind and skill, are also the agents by which his mind and body are set free." Written by Cyril M. Jansky (my new dead boyfriend and a former professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin) in 1933.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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rkr

Indeed, machines, and any tool for that matter, set us free and grant us power however that power sometimes manifests as the ability to dominate and subjugate others. Furthermore, not everyone agrees on “who” is entitled to that freedom. Still, humans have figured out some pretty neat things. Keep up the good work!
Freddie Freelance

The good thing about Dead Boyfriends is you don’t break their hearts when another darling of early 20th Century science catches your eye, and your casual heart flits off like a honeybee toward the next flower…
mdh

I firmly believe that minds free themselves, and bodies follow, with machines or without.
Terry

Speak for yourself. Around my house we’re pretty much enslaved to the machines.
IWood

So, uh…can I have your old dead boyfriend?

Not for anything weird.
Chris Williams

Maggie, did yr man Jansky have anything to do with, or to say about, at-a-distance train traffic direction systems and other early control rooms, in the period before 1930? If so, I’d like to introduce him to my own dead boyfriend, Cecil Paget.
- Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  From what I can tell, Jansky was more into salivating over the wonder of vacuum tubes during that time period. I bet they still would have gotten along, though. ;)
Anonymous

Two Words. Player Piano.
Day Vexx

I’m about to go pick up a battery for my riding mower now, and free my body from pushing an ineffective reel mower. In other words, I hear ya, Cyril!
Anonymous

I would just like to point out that saying “new dead boyfriend” sounds freaky as heck.
At a glance makes whoever reads it unable to tell if you mean you enjoy this guy work so much that you would have dated him, or if you are talking about someone you dated and then died.

( just at a first glance, then you notice the 1933, i mean, unless you are into the geriatric and he had a long lifespan)
Anonymous

Humanist nonsense.
octopod

I saw the movie like, ages ago. Arnold was in it, it was a but futurist. They liberated some of us, but, fortunately, it didn’t end so well for the machines.
Mistico

John Henry would disagree.
kaffeen

Whoa.
Tdawwg

Tell that to her her and him.