In the oldest Greek stories, Hephaestus forged a bronze automaton named Talos and set him to walk the coast of Crete. Three times a day, every day, he made his round of the island, watching for anything that shouldn't be there.
He was the first machine anyone ever imagined — and, in the end, the first machine anyone ever lost. A single small opening at his heel, unnoticed and unwatched, was all it took for him to fall.
Two and a half thousand years later, the machines that build the world still fall the same way: one small thing, unwatched, until it's too late.
