Is this the end of the motor? Moving from mechanical civilization to biological civilization

Today, there is a war often invisible at the center of the technology race. At the foundation of this race, which spans from smartphones to electric cars, humanoid robots to the defense industry, lie rare earth elements. Elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are used in the production of powerful magnets. These magnets, in turn, have become the heart of electric motors. Especially in robotic systems, small servo motors, joint mechanisms, and precision motion systems are dependent on this technology.

However, the issue is not just engineering. It is also geopolitical. Because the vast majority of these resources are concentrated in specific geographies. This situation gives birth to a new version of energy wars. Oil is now being replaced by data centers, chips, batteries, and rare earth elements. The process presented under the discourse of technological progress is actually turning into a new dimension of the global power struggle.

Perhaps there will be those who find me too pessimistic because of these thoughts. Yet, the issue is not to be against technology. On the contrary, it is about questioning the direction in which humanity's technological development line will evolve and its effects on society and the individual, which I have been working on since we established the Informatics Department at Marmara University Faculty of Communication in 1992. Because sometimes we cannot develop a technology forever. Because at some point, the system reaches its own limit and a new paradigm is required.

I think we are approaching exactly such a threshold today regarding electric motors, rare earth elements, and micro-scale mechanical systems.

In the late 19th century, New York City was facing a major crisis. Transportation in the city was provided entirely by horse-drawn carriages. As the population increased, more horses were needed, which led to a serious horse manure problem on the streets. Some newspapers of the period contained pessimistic scenarios about the cities of the future being buried under meters of manure. People were trying to solve the problem by developing faster horses, more durable horse carriages, or more efficient stables.

But the solution came from elsewhere.

The automobile emerged and the whole equation changed. Horses disappeared almost instantly.

I think it is highly likely that we will experience a similar technological bottleneck in electric motors today. Of course, electric motor technology is an extraordinary engineering achievement. Motors working at the micro-scale, powerful magnet systems, precise robotic joints, and battery technologies form the foundation of the modern world today. Universities, companies, and states are making billions of dollars in R&D investments in this field.

However, there is a fundamental problem here.

At the center of this system lie rare earth elements. This situation turns the technology race into not just an economic, but a geopolitical issue. Producing smaller and more numerous motors requires more resources. And more resources mean more competition, more dependency, and more conflict. In a sense, humanity is unknowingly driving itself into a new technological dead end.

Because today's approach is largely based on the logic of "miniaturization." Smaller chips, smaller sensors, smaller motors, more dense energy storage systems... However, the history of technology shows us that every system has a limit. The situation in chip technology today is a good example of this. The sector, which has been progressing for years by shrinking transistors, has now approached atomic scale limits. Today, 2-nanometer (nm) production is a great achievement. TSMC plans to produce 1.4 nm chips by 2028. The physical lower limit in chip technology is accepted as 0.2 nanometers, and it is thought that it could be produced around 2043. Since this value is equal to the diameter of a single silicon atom (approximately 0.2 nm), it is physically impossible for a transistor to go below this limit due to the fundamental structure of matter. So, this is also a threshold where mankind has begun to feel its physical limits.

It would not be surprising if a similar situation emerged in electric motors.

I think this is exactly where the question should be asked: Is humanity really on the right technological path?

Today's understanding of robotics is largely based on mechanical imitation. We produce metal parts, gears, magnets, and small motors to imitate the human arm. We are developing millimeter-sized electric motors to move finger joints. Universities and research centers are also spending large R&D budgets in this direction. However, when we look at the human body, the situation is completely different. There are no motors in human fingers. No magnets. No rotating mechanical systems. Instead, there are neural networks, muscle fibers, tendons, and biological feedback mechanisms.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions in the history of technology has been to think of nature as "mechanical." Perhaps it was only possible to do this much with the materials at hand. Yet, biological systems are often not mechanical; they work organically, in a distributed, adaptive, and flexible manner. The human hand does not just produce force. It also feels, adapts, and learns. The difference between a child learning to hold a pencil and a robot grasping an object emerges exactly here.

Today's robotic systems, on the other hand, act like a crude electro-mechanical simulation of the human body. Motors, gears, software, and energy systems are required to move a robot finger. A human finger, however, works with an organic coordination system developed by millions of years of biological evolution.

For this reason, the real vision of the future may not be to produce smaller motors. The issue is to transcend the "motor" entirely.

Today, fields such as "artificial muscles," biomimetic systems, soft robotics, and neuromorphic engineering are gaining importance for this very reason. However, these studies are still not at the center of the global technology race. Because the current industrial paradigm is based on the logic of mechanical production. And you cannot abandon that logic overnight. Yet, an approach aimed at understanding biological systems requires a much more interdisciplinary way of thinking. This transformation cannot happen without thinking about biology, neuroscience, materials science, communication systems, and even sociology together.

A significant criticism must also be directed at universities here. Universities often turn into technical laboratories that respond to the short-term needs of the industry. A few grams lighter motor, a slightly stronger magnet, a slightly more efficient battery... These are, of course, important engineering achievements. But they do not change the paradigm that drives humanity into a new resource war. In fact, sometimes they deepen it even further.

However, the duty of the university is not just to optimize the existing system. It is to develop a new vision of civilization.

Today, humanity is at a very critical threshold. It will either create new geopolitical conflicts for more rare earth elements or try to understand nature's biological intelligence of millions of years. The first path means more mining, more competition, and likely more war. The second path means a more difficult, slower, but perhaps a much more humane future.

Most of human history has been built on the development of material and mechanical systems. The industrial revolution was shaped by steam engines, and the digital age by electronic systems. However, it is possible for organic systems to become more central in the coming period. Already, synthetic biology, biohybrid robotics, and artificial muscle technologies are showing early signs of this transformation.

Nature has developed extremely energy-efficient, adaptive, and durable systems over millions of years of evolution. Man-made mechanical systems, on the other hand, have largely remained as crude models of these. But humanity's passion for developing better models has never ended. Perhaps it is this very search that will carry us to the next stage.

The most important technological leap of the future may not be a new motor, but a new "understanding of vitality." Then, at the end of the 21st century, humanity will look at today's micro-motor race as it looks at the 19th-century efforts to produce faster horses.

The future of technology is perhaps hidden not in metal but in muscle, not in the motor but in the nerve, not in mechanical force but in the organizational form of biological intelligence. In fact, we had started to see the first major sign of this in the field of artificial intelligence since the 1980s. For many years, artificial intelligence studies were based on a rule-based programming approach that tried to explain the world around us through rigid rules. However, they were insufficient in managing the uncertainties, probabilities, and complex relationships of real life. Afterward, artificial neural networks inspired by the human brain emerged and the paradigm changed. Systems began to learn the world not through precise rules, but through patterns, probabilities, and experience.

We are likely approaching the threshold of a similar transformation again. Today, the understanding that tries to shrink mechanical and electromechanical systems forever may be replaced by a new approach that tries to understand nature's logic of biological organization. And then, perhaps, instead of today's metal-bodied, motorized robots, we will be talking about biological-hybrid beings closer to the Nexus-6 replicants in the film Blade Runner.