63
4.3 Military Roots of the Modern “Life Cycle”
“Life cycle” naturally captures the changing qualities of living beings throughout
their existence. Referring to a nonliving object’s or system’s life cycle moves
beyond the poetic devices of personification or anthropomorphization. These literary techniques imply living behaviors in things that are not alive but rarely are
mistaken for a description of something actually coming to life in the biological
sense. While similar to Hobbs’ use of the Leviathan and the Behemoth to condense
sprawling and complex political structures made up of living people and living laws
into images of gigantic biblical monsters, the term, borrowed from the biological
sciences, avoids the spectacular or the fantastic. The reference in this modest budgeting report to an analytical process description, instead, transfers to nonliving
material some of the essential qualities of living beings.
A cynical interpretation concludes that, with this conceptual transference, the
animate and inanimate are inadvertently conflated or equalized in terms of how they
can be accounted for and ultimately valued. The uncomfortable question of the
monetary value of human life is, however, already answered in the actuarial tables
kept by insurance companies, and these tables date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
A more optimistic view of the same developments could anticipate that, in the
coming decades, we might be able to interact with objects and systems throughout
their entire life spans to support and improve the quality of life and that, as cybernetic elements, each produced thing would be able to provide feedback regarding
their status at key moments. Sensing and communicating, acting in and reacting in
relation to their context, they could provide metrics and insight about a variety of
critical aspects regarding their relationship to us and our shared environment over
time. This would partially manifest early systems dynamics implied ideals of building a network of self-regulating components all working individually and together
for the good of humankind.
The actual term “life cycle” has been in use since the early nineteenth century in
Germany to describe the natural rhythms of biological systems from birth to death.
Science writers often mixed descriptions of life and its changing phases with references to the divine:
The Creator caused the infinite number of varied, beautifully formed, flowering, and fragrant plants to sprout from the ground, not to blossom and wither, but to be useful in many
ways to man and to the whole organic kingdom; he gave the mind to use them expediently,
to observe them in the various periods of their metamorphoses, before and after their cycle
of life, in order to increase their knowledge, to cultivate their mind and to fulfill its destiny.
John, JF (1810). Chemical investigations of mineral, vegetable and animal substances.
Continuation of the chemical laboratory, vol. 1: 5. (Toepfer 2018)
In the late1950s, a century and half after what may be the earliest published reference of the term used in biological sciences, the life cycle concept would be appropriated and officially applied to nonliving things and, perhaps most ironically, to the
financial analysis of national weapon systems and armaments. This proposition
4.3 Military Roots of the Modern “Life Cycle”
4.3 Military Roots of the Modern “Life Cycle”
“Life cycle” naturally captures the changing qualities of living beings throughout
their existence. Referring to a nonliving object’s or system’s life cycle moves
beyond the poetic devices of personification or anthropomorphization. These literary techniques imply living behaviors in things that are not alive but rarely are
mistaken for a description of something actually coming to life in the biological
sense. While similar to Hobbs’ use of the Leviathan and the Behemoth to condense
sprawling and complex political structures made up of living people and living laws
into images of gigantic biblical monsters, the term, borrowed from the biological
sciences, avoids the spectacular or the fantastic. The reference in this modest budgeting report to an analytical process description, instead, transfers to nonliving
material some of the essential qualities of living beings.
A cynical interpretation concludes that, with this conceptual transference, the
animate and inanimate are inadvertently conflated or equalized in terms of how they
can be accounted for and ultimately valued. The uncomfortable question of the
monetary value of human life is, however, already answered in the actuarial tables
kept by insurance companies, and these tables date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
A more optimistic view of the same developments could anticipate that, in the
coming decades, we might be able to interact with objects and systems throughout
their entire life spans to support and improve the quality of life and that, as cybernetic elements, each produced thing would be able to provide feedback regarding
their status at key moments. Sensing and communicating, acting in and reacting in
relation to their context, they could provide metrics and insight about a variety of
critical aspects regarding their relationship to us and our shared environment over
time. This would partially manifest early systems dynamics implied ideals of building a network of self-regulating components all working individually and together
for the good of humankind.
The actual term “life cycle” has been in use since the early nineteenth century in
Germany to describe the natural rhythms of biological systems from birth to death.
Science writers often mixed descriptions of life and its changing phases with references to the divine:
The Creator caused the infinite number of varied, beautifully formed, flowering, and fragrant plants to sprout from the ground, not to blossom and wither, but to be useful in many
ways to man and to the whole organic kingdom; he gave the mind to use them expediently,
to observe them in the various periods of their metamorphoses, before and after their cycle
of life, in order to increase their knowledge, to cultivate their mind and to fulfill its destiny.
John, JF (1810). Chemical investigations of mineral, vegetable and animal substances.
Continuation of the chemical laboratory, vol. 1: 5. (Toepfer 2018)
In the late1950s, a century and half after what may be the earliest published reference of the term used in biological sciences, the life cycle concept would be appropriated and officially applied to nonliving things and, perhaps most ironically, to the
financial analysis of national weapon systems and armaments. This proposition
4.3 Military Roots of the Modern “Life Cycle”