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You're right that the technology they use is very mature, but anti-machine stigma is a definite "thing" in the Dune milieu, blowback from the Butlerian Jihad.

You're right that the technology they use is very mature, but anti-machine stigma is a definite "thing" in the Dune milieu, blowback from the Butlerian Jihad. At one point Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam says something to the Lady Jessica about the difficulties of working with a feudal culture that has "turned it's back on most technology", something like that. Ornithopter muscles are not electromechanical, they're organic.

superkuh 5y ago
>blowback from the Butlerian Jihad. Which itself is a reference to Samuel Butler's 1872 satirical novel "Erewhon" which featured a culture that had banned all complex machines due to an experience with machine intelligences revolting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
sandworm101 5y ago
I think the language re "machines" in the Dune context refers more to thinking devices, computers, than to mechanization.
- carapace 5y ago
  That's the origin and emphasis of the Butlerian Jihad, for sure, but it seems to me that there's a more general disdain of machines in the galactic culture. Although they certainly do use a lot of machinery: shield generators, poison snoopers, spaceships, etc. so maybe not.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    On the other hand, in Dune universe we see all that weird machinery used by a very unusual part of the society, the top 0.01%; and even they're not a product of the societies they live in but an import from the partially shunned Ixian community - so we can presume that the ordinary people don't make or use machines nearly as much. E.g. there are some instances of complex electronics, but it seems like most planets e.g. Caladan would have near-zero electronic industry, it doesn't seem that this would be a career option for some random inhabitant of Atreides' home planet to just decide to study electronics and make them.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  True, but allmost all of our modern machines need lots of thinking devices to work.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    I see lots of calculators that can execute programs (CPUs). I see lots of software that is great a pattern recognition or trend analysis (AI). What I haven't seen are any devices actually thinking through a problem.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Depends how you define thinking. I used it in that calculations are "thinking" work.
      - addingnumbers 5y ago
        That seems uncomfortably close to claiming every Turing-complete device is artificial intelligence.
        carapace 5y ago
        Well, Turing was formalizing something that his mind was doing, so in a sense, yes, Turing Machines have always been AI.

superkuh 5y ago

>blowback from the Butlerian Jihad. Which itself is a reference to Samuel Butler's 1872 satirical novel "Erewhon" which featured a culture that had banned all complex machines due to an experience with machine intelligences revolting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon

sandworm101 5y ago

I think the language re "machines" in the Dune context refers more to thinking devices, computers, than to mechanization.

carapace 5y ago
That's the origin and emphasis of the Butlerian Jihad, for sure, but it seems to me that there's a more general disdain of machines in the galactic culture. Although they certainly do use a lot of machinery: shield generators, poison snoopers, spaceships, etc. so maybe not.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  On the other hand, in Dune universe we see all that weird machinery used by a very unusual part of the society, the top 0.01%; and even they're not a product of the societies they live in but an import from the partially shunned Ixian community - so we can presume that the ordinary people don't make or use machines nearly as much. E.g. there are some instances of complex electronics, but it seems like most planets e.g. Caladan would have near-zero electronic industry, it doesn't seem that this would be a career option for some random inhabitant of Atreides' home planet to just decide to study electronics and make them.
hutzlibu 5y ago
True, but allmost all of our modern machines need lots of thinking devices to work.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  I see lots of calculators that can execute programs (CPUs). I see lots of software that is great a pattern recognition or trend analysis (AI). What I haven't seen are any devices actually thinking through a problem.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Depends how you define thinking. I used it in that calculations are "thinking" work.
    - addingnumbers 5y ago
      That seems uncomfortably close to claiming every Turing-complete device is artificial intelligence.
      - carapace 5y ago
        Well, Turing was formalizing something that his mind was doing, so in a sense, yes, Turing Machines have always been AI.