We didn't have to await Archimedes for the invention of the machine, for being has never consisted of anything but machines. Nature or being consists of nothing but factories, microand macro-machines – often wrapped within one another – drawing on flows of material from other machines and producing flows with new forms as their products in the course of their operations. In short, being is an ensemble or assemblage of machines. As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, machines consist of "... material or immaterial structure[s] [composing] the fabric of the world or of the universe." "Machine" is thus our name for any entity, material or immaterial, corporeal or incorporeal, that exists. "Entity," "object," "existent," "substance," "body," and "thing," are all synonyms of "machine."If we are partial to the term "machine" to denote the elementary units of being, then this is for two reasons. First, the concept of machine admirably captures the essence of entities as beings that function or operate. To be is to do, to operate, to act. Second, where "object" evokes connotations of a being opposed to or posited by a subject, "machine" avoids these associations, allowing us to step outside a four hundred year old philosophical obsession with interrogating the relationship between subjects and objects. As the OED observes, a machine is "a body regarded as functioning as an independent body ..."

Common Prejudices About Machines

All Machines Are Rigid Machines

However, if we are to develop a machine-oriented ontology (MOO), it is first necessary to clear away some prejudices or assumptions we have regarding the nature of machines. The first of these prejudices is the view that “rigid machines” are exhaustive of the being of machines as such. A rigid machine is a machine composed of fixed material parts, characterized by routinized functioning, and is incapable of learning, growth, and development.