Daedalus
The master craftsman whose brilliance keeps producing brilliant disasters.
Origin
Athenian inventor and architect. He designed the Labyrinth on Crete to contain the Minotaur for King Minos, then helped Theseus escape it. When Minos imprisoned him in turn, he built wings of wax and feathers to fly out — and watched his son Icarus fall into the sea. Earlier in his career he had murdered his nephew Perdix out of professional jealousy after the boy invented the saw. Brilliant, indispensable, and trailed by collateral damage.
Modern usage
Reached for in writing about engineers, designers, and AI researchers whose creations escape them. James Joyce gave the name to his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, cementing it as the patron saint of ambitious makers.
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