we're overlapping now, because yes, like hardcore it was very much the sound of the future, all the tech being pushed to it's limits, although without a focus on sound quality until a few years later which i think for many of you here signified the end of the good old days anyway. but disco a mechanised machine music? nah man. take the blinkers off. you know even our man Hardy was playing the sweet and loose just as much as the robotic, in fact that's what made him so exhilarating.
By machine music I don't necessarily mean robotic - although that is certainly one proto-techno aspect of it yes. I mean that disco as you said stripped everything down to a factory assembly line 4-4 groove. It's why disco as a whole is kickdrum dominated (despite all the percussive and afrocuban tinges which are layered over the top) be that analog or digital. This comes from the gay scene as you probably know. The more classic breakbeaty funk which was looser and less steady was more of a straighter thing. Something of authenticity - tighten up! rather than dance trance abandon. By machine we aren't just talking about robots but the process of automation.
E.G: this is totally machinic music.
You get this with Can and the german guys in the early 70s. It's not a music of robots but they use the electrical amplification to interface with a machinic aspect inherent within electrical current as such.