---
title: "Technomorphism"
description: "Tripaldi's name for the stance that raises the machine (clock, telegraph, computer, \"universal computation\") to an archetype broad enough to subsume organisms — \"the organism is a machine,\" \"DNA is…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/technomorphism"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/technomorphism"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Technomorphism

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/technomorphism), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Tripaldi's name for the stance that raises the machine (clock, telegraph, computer, "universal computation") to an archetype broad enough to subsume organisms — "the organism is a machine," "DNA is literally a program." Its necessary premise and consequence is *substrate indifference*: matter becomes an interchangeable carrier of a universal function, so hybridizing flesh and silicon would "make no difference to the ontology of our machines." Lineage: Descartes's bête-machine → La Mettrie → Keller's "discourse of gene action" → Liberman's molecular computer → Agüera y Arcas. Tripaldi credits it with dissolving machine-as-imitation but rejects the price. The mirror-image error is *biomimesis* (nature as archetype; functions substrate-bound; Searle).

## Appears in

- [Substrates Unbound](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/substrates) (2025-11-21)
- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)
- [Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._