The Paradise of Machines
Contemporary art and knowledge economy 1960-
Modern art lasted about 100 years and was replaced in the early 1960s by contemporary art.
At exactly the same time in 1962, the knowledge economy of our post-modern society was theorized by Fritz Machlup.
I was born at the beginning of this pivotal period, in 1965.
The knowledge economy is based on 4 knowledges and a law.
the first two types of knowledge are now fully integrated into computers:
The first knowledge is knowledge-what, which is the capital of France, the river that flows through London, etc.
The second knowledge is knowledge-how, how to cook a hard-boiled egg, how to plant a nail, how to keep accounts.
the other two forms of knowledge are still human prerogative:
The third knowledge is know-why, which is the art of scientific and artistic questioning.
the fourth knowledge is knowledge-who, who puts a particular position and why. It is empirical knowledge.
the fundamental law of the knowledge economy is Wilson’s law, which says that it favors knowledge and intelligence, and money will follow.
In its first phase, namely the integration of know-what and know-how into computers, the knowledge economy sounded the death knell of the purely mechanical industrial production tool by its gradual replacement by robotic machines integrating the maximum of know-how thanks to the addition of electronics and computers.
Overall, it consisted of putting high tech into low tech.
I participated in this, my job as a computer scientist from 1985 to 2003 was to automate administrative work.
Nowadays, very few engineering schools use the word "art" but instead express applied science;
What became the inspiring machines of Robert Delaunay, and well
others? They gradually ceased to be used, then became documentary objects in eco-museums, where local know-how is explained, such as the House of Leather Crafts in Graulhet, or in dedicated museums such as the Automobile Museum and the Train Museum. Some factories have been granted directly to the World Heritage Site.
But mainly the machines left either for scrap or in countries with cheap labor.
in the second phase of the knowledge economy that we are currently experiencing in 2026, it seems obvious that through artificial intelligence we want to integrate into computers the other two forms of knowledge: knowing why and knowing who.
Our only strength as human beings in the face of this computing power that we cannot compete with is our advantage to operate in an analogical and spiritual way.
The Paradise of Machines I have already said it, it is an occult world.
Powerful machines are transfigured into powerful symbols and everything is analogy operated.
The Paradise of Machines thus becomes a temple, a sanctuary. It is a temple without religion, without beliefs, without dogma, nor liturgy; only the sacred character of human inventiveness applied to technology and industry is celebrated there.
What is certain is that the people who created and bought the machines did so because they had the faith and the heart to invest in them to change the world (for their own benefit)
Inspiration to do new things will always be something mysterious.
The god of Israel, Yahweh, most likely takes his name from the phonetic word Yah – inspiration and expiration. God is the meaning of life; from the air breathed at first to the end.
Hindus created the name Veda for their sacred texts, most likely for the same phonetic reason. But by placing the phonetics "expiration" before the phonetics of inspiration, they are using the same path used in the paradise of Machines.
It is the resurrection of the Phoenix, the firebird of the Egyptians, which reappears from its ashes. If alchemy is the art of transforming base metal into gold: gold today is imagination over future knowledge.
This is why the Paradise of machines is contemporary art, because it includes a whole section on the theory of knowledge. Otherwise, there would only be a whole section of modern art (statuary of the graphic work of great artists) that had not been made.
Some people say that contemporary art was born in 1945, so suffice it to say that the first computer, the ENIAC, dates from 1946 to get the same conclusions.