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Technics and Civilization
This is a history of the machine and a critical study of its effects on civilization. Mumford has drawn on every aspect of life to explain the machine and to trace its social results. "An extraordinarily wide-ranging, sensitive, and provocative book about a subject upon which
philosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy).
philosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy).
495 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1934
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5163 people want to read
About the author
Lewis Mumford
138 books304 followersLewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian and philosopher of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary critic. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes.
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May 29, 2022
This is a stunning book. So good that I’ve tracked down some more recent books that cover similar ground – not least since this book was written in the 1930s, and so I assume more research has been done covering the same ground. A few years ago, I read The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. I’ve read over it a few number of since, because in it somewhere he says the difference between mechanised labour and craftmanship is that the craftsman relates to the differences that exist in the materials that they are presented with. Even if you are dealing with wood from the same tree, it will never be quite the same as another piece of wood even from the same tree and so your technique will need to take those differences into account. The skill of being a craftsperson is in being able to adjust your technique to meet the demands of the material you are working with. This is the opposite of mechanised labour – which standardises inputs so as to ensure the production process does not need to take variations in the input materials into account. As he says, the first car off a production line is identical to the last car off the production line, and if not, then there is something wrong with the production process.
This book is a history of technique. As such it is somewhat different to the history of the machine, even if these two histories overlap significantly. He makes the point early on here that techniques are abstracted, analysed and then made simpler upon humans as a kind of first step towards them being turned over to machines. The division of labour happens before labour becomes mechanised, even if transformed in that process too.
He divides the history of technique into three large (and overlapping) phases: eotechnic (from about 1000-1800), paleotechnic (from 1700-1900) and neotechnic (from about 1850 to 1930 – when the book was written). This is mostly a western version of technique, and so other than the briefest mentions of Arabic and Chinese innovations, the cross-pollination of technique and technology is barely mentioned. This is a failing of the book, but perhaps one inevitable for the time. Still, I think the virtues of this book are great enough to make it worth reading, even all this time later.
Each of the three phases are defined in large part by the materials they deploy and the sources of energy they use. So, the eotechnic phase is dominated by wood and the paleotechnic by coal and iron. The most interesting part of this book, perhaps, is how the author explains the benefits and disadvantages of various materials – whether wood or glass or iron. Something else I particularly liked here was the idea that you needed, as a civilisation, to move towards some form of abstract understanding of how the world works to be able to notice some of these properties of the materials you use. So, if a tree remained a kind of god, you may not notice it could be used as a wheel. The eotechnic phase could also be said to be a movement away from seeking to replicate human, animal or organic forms in technical devices. Interestingly, he sees the neotechnic phase as a movement back to the organic.
At one point he stresses that most books on technique and machines are dominated by lists of inventions and inventors – and these are often excuses to praise one’s own nationality. I saw a comedy sketch a while ago where someone from Scotland was increasingly claiming daft things as if they had been invented by the Scottish – you know, like nodding your head or sneezing, you know, Edwin McCavindish was the first man to sneeze in 1742, before the bloody English took it over as a past-time.
The point made here is that machines are the most communist of things. They generally get named after the last person who contributed to them – Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk – but really, no one invents anything from scratch. Often there are hundreds of separate inventions contained in even the most apparently simple machines.
This idea of machines being communistic is something of a theme in the book. At least in the sense that we would today probably be more likely to call ‘social’. I can’t imagine Ayn Rand would have approved of this book. In Atlas Shrugged her inventors are proper inventors. They owe nothing to anyone else and deserve full credit (financial as well as all other forms of credit) for their genius. But that isn’t what this book does, we are back with Newton on the shoulders of giants.
But machines are communistic in other ways too. Their entire point is to displace labour and for the author that means making life less oppressive. There is a lovely line that was supposed to have been said by Milton Friedman while he was touring somewhere in the under-developed world. He was watching people using shovels to shift dirt to flatten a hill or something and he asked why they didn’t just use some sort of tractor or digging machine. The person showing him around said that they needed to ensure people were employed, and so a machine would put too many of them out of work. Milton is supposed to have said, ‘then why don’t you give them teaspoons to dig with?’ Damn good question. Of course, the answer is that we can’t stand the idea of people not working. Our entire society has been created around the central idea that if you don’t work you don’t eat. But machines only make sense if they make humans more productive, if they displace labour. The author’s point is that this causes a problem for capitalism, which only makes a profit when machines continue producing. The link between need and profit becomes central here – where needs are converted to wants and wants are driven by fashion and ‘programmed obsolescence’. So that productivity becomes an end in itself.
As such, the author calls for some form of rational constraint being placed upon our wants so that the actual boon of technique and machinery can be to transform human life. And this is by greatly expanding the amount of free time we have available so that we can pursue more truly human tasks than the utter drudgery that is most mechanised work. He also refers to this as a kind of communism too – but he makes it clear that what he understands by that term is quite different from what Marx meant by it. This is more like that book Fully Automated Luxury Communism – for us to use technology as a way to move to a post-work society.
He paints a very grim picture of the life of a miner – hardly the first one to do that. He says that working in a mine is the very opposite of organic life. The work was not only hard, but could barely be understood as fully human. In fact, for a long time working in mines was literally a punishment for criminals. But the life of the miner was difficult in other ways too. For instance, you could work for years before you ‘struck gold’ – but someone could dig for a day beside you and retire wealthy. Machines were added early to the mining process and this made mining a capitalist enterprise before this was true across society more generally. And so, the excesses and tortures of capitalist exploitation were tried out in mining long before they were brought to the dark satanic mills.
It had never quite occurred to me that mills were the original name for factories. Mills originally were beside rivers which they uses to turn a waterwheel to turn a large stone to grind flour. But the name stuck, even when the source of power became the steam engine. There are lovely bits to this book. For instance, while you have a large steam engine driving the machines in your factory, you need to design the factory around the drive shaft coming from that steam engine. But with the electric engine, you can design the factory according to the spatial demands of the work to be done in it, rather than the demands of the drive shaft.
He spends a lot of this book discussing time. The invention of the clock was originally linked to the need of monks to pray at set times during the day. But the mechanisation of society is only possible by more and more detailed constraint on time and tempo. As such, the progress of the orchestra is informative here. For orchestral music to work, the control of time is totally essential. Increasingly, this is true of all aspects of society. In fact, at the moment from Hobart to Cape York in Australia (about 4,500 km north to south) all are at the same time, and this is true regardless of time of sunrise or sunset. Today, for example, the sun will set at 6:14pm in Cape York, but at 4:47pm in Hobart. This mandated control of time has become much more important since this book was written. It is within my lifetime that a friend of mine could tell me of a Russian proverb that if you want to be certain of the time you must have only one watch. That hardly makes any sense today, where any differences between the times shown on our watches and phones linked to the internet are too small for us to notice.
The important message in this book is that technique demands us to consider the best use of the power we have at our disposal – and, again, this is a deeply social demand. For too much of recent history (the last 300 years, perhaps) we have not really engineered techniques to the extent that they should have been engineered otherwise. He twice quotes some calculations on the force needed to move a large block across some level ground. And how, if the situation is properly constructed to facilitate the movement of the heavy object (with wheels etc) that the force needed can be reduced to effectively nothing compared to what is necessary without this forethought and preparation. But too often we use brute force as a substitute for intelligence. The case of the steam engine and the waste of heat involved, and of otherwise reuseable biproducts of the burning coal, is a case in point. This again feeds into his concern with the waste of human effort and time in producing crap we don’t really need to ensure continued profit. It is a fascinating argument, not least since it was being made during the great depression. His concerns about the destruction of the natural environment also seems ahead of its time.
Oh, I should finish on the idea of progress – this isn’t a book the Stephen Pinkers of the world would be all that impressed with either. This was written after the First World War and just before the Second. He makes the point that people felt that the neotechnic phase (essentially the electrification of industry phase) would be a time of great peace – and it had been, right up until the Great War, and then it stopped being about peace and it was about remarkable destruction – and soon after this book entire cities could be reduced to ash in seconds. His point is that war becomes something quite different with this new phase of technology. We are still witnessing this. The images coming out of Ukraine are useful in ways that the effective media blockades of similar images from the media embedded in the war machine in either Iraq or Gaza never were. We get to see the repulsiveness of the military industrial complex that we were simply never allowed to see in previously wars other than in snippets – and even then only sotto voce, after some endless shite about surgical strikes having been directed at military targets. This inhumanity of military is one of the things the author points out has long been a driving force for the development of technology. In fact, he sees capitalism as a kind of linking together of mining and the military.
I had to keep reminding myself this book was written in the 1930s as I was reading it. He’s something of a polymath. One of my favourite things. I really haven’t skimmed the surface of this book in this review. It really is something else. Highly recommended.
This book is a history of technique. As such it is somewhat different to the history of the machine, even if these two histories overlap significantly. He makes the point early on here that techniques are abstracted, analysed and then made simpler upon humans as a kind of first step towards them being turned over to machines. The division of labour happens before labour becomes mechanised, even if transformed in that process too.
He divides the history of technique into three large (and overlapping) phases: eotechnic (from about 1000-1800), paleotechnic (from 1700-1900) and neotechnic (from about 1850 to 1930 – when the book was written). This is mostly a western version of technique, and so other than the briefest mentions of Arabic and Chinese innovations, the cross-pollination of technique and technology is barely mentioned. This is a failing of the book, but perhaps one inevitable for the time. Still, I think the virtues of this book are great enough to make it worth reading, even all this time later.
Each of the three phases are defined in large part by the materials they deploy and the sources of energy they use. So, the eotechnic phase is dominated by wood and the paleotechnic by coal and iron. The most interesting part of this book, perhaps, is how the author explains the benefits and disadvantages of various materials – whether wood or glass or iron. Something else I particularly liked here was the idea that you needed, as a civilisation, to move towards some form of abstract understanding of how the world works to be able to notice some of these properties of the materials you use. So, if a tree remained a kind of god, you may not notice it could be used as a wheel. The eotechnic phase could also be said to be a movement away from seeking to replicate human, animal or organic forms in technical devices. Interestingly, he sees the neotechnic phase as a movement back to the organic.
At one point he stresses that most books on technique and machines are dominated by lists of inventions and inventors – and these are often excuses to praise one’s own nationality. I saw a comedy sketch a while ago where someone from Scotland was increasingly claiming daft things as if they had been invented by the Scottish – you know, like nodding your head or sneezing, you know, Edwin McCavindish was the first man to sneeze in 1742, before the bloody English took it over as a past-time.
The point made here is that machines are the most communist of things. They generally get named after the last person who contributed to them – Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk – but really, no one invents anything from scratch. Often there are hundreds of separate inventions contained in even the most apparently simple machines.
This idea of machines being communistic is something of a theme in the book. At least in the sense that we would today probably be more likely to call ‘social’. I can’t imagine Ayn Rand would have approved of this book. In Atlas Shrugged her inventors are proper inventors. They owe nothing to anyone else and deserve full credit (financial as well as all other forms of credit) for their genius. But that isn’t what this book does, we are back with Newton on the shoulders of giants.
But machines are communistic in other ways too. Their entire point is to displace labour and for the author that means making life less oppressive. There is a lovely line that was supposed to have been said by Milton Friedman while he was touring somewhere in the under-developed world. He was watching people using shovels to shift dirt to flatten a hill or something and he asked why they didn’t just use some sort of tractor or digging machine. The person showing him around said that they needed to ensure people were employed, and so a machine would put too many of them out of work. Milton is supposed to have said, ‘then why don’t you give them teaspoons to dig with?’ Damn good question. Of course, the answer is that we can’t stand the idea of people not working. Our entire society has been created around the central idea that if you don’t work you don’t eat. But machines only make sense if they make humans more productive, if they displace labour. The author’s point is that this causes a problem for capitalism, which only makes a profit when machines continue producing. The link between need and profit becomes central here – where needs are converted to wants and wants are driven by fashion and ‘programmed obsolescence’. So that productivity becomes an end in itself.
As such, the author calls for some form of rational constraint being placed upon our wants so that the actual boon of technique and machinery can be to transform human life. And this is by greatly expanding the amount of free time we have available so that we can pursue more truly human tasks than the utter drudgery that is most mechanised work. He also refers to this as a kind of communism too – but he makes it clear that what he understands by that term is quite different from what Marx meant by it. This is more like that book Fully Automated Luxury Communism – for us to use technology as a way to move to a post-work society.
He paints a very grim picture of the life of a miner – hardly the first one to do that. He says that working in a mine is the very opposite of organic life. The work was not only hard, but could barely be understood as fully human. In fact, for a long time working in mines was literally a punishment for criminals. But the life of the miner was difficult in other ways too. For instance, you could work for years before you ‘struck gold’ – but someone could dig for a day beside you and retire wealthy. Machines were added early to the mining process and this made mining a capitalist enterprise before this was true across society more generally. And so, the excesses and tortures of capitalist exploitation were tried out in mining long before they were brought to the dark satanic mills.
It had never quite occurred to me that mills were the original name for factories. Mills originally were beside rivers which they uses to turn a waterwheel to turn a large stone to grind flour. But the name stuck, even when the source of power became the steam engine. There are lovely bits to this book. For instance, while you have a large steam engine driving the machines in your factory, you need to design the factory around the drive shaft coming from that steam engine. But with the electric engine, you can design the factory according to the spatial demands of the work to be done in it, rather than the demands of the drive shaft.
He spends a lot of this book discussing time. The invention of the clock was originally linked to the need of monks to pray at set times during the day. But the mechanisation of society is only possible by more and more detailed constraint on time and tempo. As such, the progress of the orchestra is informative here. For orchestral music to work, the control of time is totally essential. Increasingly, this is true of all aspects of society. In fact, at the moment from Hobart to Cape York in Australia (about 4,500 km north to south) all are at the same time, and this is true regardless of time of sunrise or sunset. Today, for example, the sun will set at 6:14pm in Cape York, but at 4:47pm in Hobart. This mandated control of time has become much more important since this book was written. It is within my lifetime that a friend of mine could tell me of a Russian proverb that if you want to be certain of the time you must have only one watch. That hardly makes any sense today, where any differences between the times shown on our watches and phones linked to the internet are too small for us to notice.
The important message in this book is that technique demands us to consider the best use of the power we have at our disposal – and, again, this is a deeply social demand. For too much of recent history (the last 300 years, perhaps) we have not really engineered techniques to the extent that they should have been engineered otherwise. He twice quotes some calculations on the force needed to move a large block across some level ground. And how, if the situation is properly constructed to facilitate the movement of the heavy object (with wheels etc) that the force needed can be reduced to effectively nothing compared to what is necessary without this forethought and preparation. But too often we use brute force as a substitute for intelligence. The case of the steam engine and the waste of heat involved, and of otherwise reuseable biproducts of the burning coal, is a case in point. This again feeds into his concern with the waste of human effort and time in producing crap we don’t really need to ensure continued profit. It is a fascinating argument, not least since it was being made during the great depression. His concerns about the destruction of the natural environment also seems ahead of its time.
Oh, I should finish on the idea of progress – this isn’t a book the Stephen Pinkers of the world would be all that impressed with either. This was written after the First World War and just before the Second. He makes the point that people felt that the neotechnic phase (essentially the electrification of industry phase) would be a time of great peace – and it had been, right up until the Great War, and then it stopped being about peace and it was about remarkable destruction – and soon after this book entire cities could be reduced to ash in seconds. His point is that war becomes something quite different with this new phase of technology. We are still witnessing this. The images coming out of Ukraine are useful in ways that the effective media blockades of similar images from the media embedded in the war machine in either Iraq or Gaza never were. We get to see the repulsiveness of the military industrial complex that we were simply never allowed to see in previously wars other than in snippets – and even then only sotto voce, after some endless shite about surgical strikes having been directed at military targets. This inhumanity of military is one of the things the author points out has long been a driving force for the development of technology. In fact, he sees capitalism as a kind of linking together of mining and the military.
I had to keep reminding myself this book was written in the 1930s as I was reading it. He’s something of a polymath. One of my favourite things. I really haven’t skimmed the surface of this book in this review. It really is something else. Highly recommended.
December 31, 2016
From how monks invented clocks to control social order through technics that concentrated power including through industrial revolution this likely is one of the most influential books ever on this old, thoroughly sodden mind of a historian dad, philosopher wife, sociologist. Excellent for political or economic sociology or anthropology. The historical and cultural background for those of us teaching the "new" field of STS (Science, Technology, Society) or Science Studies.
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January 1, 2021Luis Mamford je bio poznati američki sociolog i istoričar koji se bavio uticajem tehnike na ljudsko društvo, kao i samim njenim razvojem. Pored toga oblast interesovanja mu je bila i sociologija urbanizma. Ideološki je umereni levičar.
Tehnika i civilizacija je prvi tom tetralogije, Renewal of life. Prati razvoj izuma od 10 veka, pronalaska prvobitnog časovnika, po Mamfordu ključne mašine naše civilizacije, koja kasnije postaje svojevrsni buržoaski ideal, pa sve do vremena do pred Drugi svetski rat.
Razvoj je podeljen u 3 epohe :
Eotehničku (za koju su karakateristični resursi vode, vetra i drveta)
Paleotehničku (ugalj i gvožđe)
Neotehničku (struja i legure)
Zanimljiv je osvrt na svako od tri razdoblja, uz izume, dobre i loše stvari, razvoj i međuuticaj drugih oblasti ljudskog delovanja u toku samih tih epoha. Krajnja poglavlja su posvećena njegovom, tada optimističnom pogledu na razvoj civilizacije, (godina 1934. kad je objavljena knjiga) uz predloge kako uskladiti tehnološki i ekonomski razvoj sa prirodom. Nažalost to se nije ostvarilo, ali ostaje riznica zanimljivih ideja bliskih sistemu koji je bio kasnije u SFRJ i nordijskom tipu države socijalnog blagostanja.
Tehnika i civilizacija je prvi tom tetralogije, Renewal of life. Prati razvoj izuma od 10 veka, pronalaska prvobitnog časovnika, po Mamfordu ključne mašine naše civilizacije, koja kasnije postaje svojevrsni buržoaski ideal, pa sve do vremena do pred Drugi svetski rat.
Razvoj je podeljen u 3 epohe :
Eotehničku (za koju su karakateristični resursi vode, vetra i drveta)
Paleotehničku (ugalj i gvožđe)
Neotehničku (struja i legure)
Zanimljiv je osvrt na svako od tri razdoblja, uz izume, dobre i loše stvari, razvoj i međuuticaj drugih oblasti ljudskog delovanja u toku samih tih epoha. Krajnja poglavlja su posvećena njegovom, tada optimističnom pogledu na razvoj civilizacije, (godina 1934. kad je objavljena knjiga) uz predloge kako uskladiti tehnološki i ekonomski razvoj sa prirodom. Nažalost to se nije ostvarilo, ali ostaje riznica zanimljivih ideja bliskih sistemu koji je bio kasnije u SFRJ i nordijskom tipu države socijalnog blagostanja.
May 16, 2011
Writing in the early 1930's Lewis Mumford offers a sweeping viewing of technological development over the past thousand years of human history. But Mumford is far from a simple chronicler of technological achievement and failure. As Langdon Winner observes in his introduction to the book, Mumford is among the first thinkers to advance a clear philosophy of technology. Indeed, Mumford's insights into, criticisms of, and prescriptions for technological development are fascinating. While Mumford is most frequently recognized for his distinctions between various periods of technological development (i.e. eotechnic, paleotechnic, and neotechnic), I think Mumford's greatest contributions are in his insights into the fundamental ambivalence of machines for good and evil purposes. As such, Mumford is not a simple romantic (anti-technology), nor is he a thoughtless technological enthusiast. Instead, Mumford calls for a critical evaluation of technological systems and devices relative to the nature, abilities, and goals of human beings that possess a rich thought life that resists an overly simplistic regimentation. Apart from the various insights Mumford offers, he is also pleasure to read. In short, Mumford writes with a tremendous amount of candor, wit, and intelligence, which I find refreshing. Although the book was written in 1934, its insights are still relevant, and I would highly recommend this book to others looking for a thoughtful, wise, and engaging treatment of technological development.
July 21, 2024
One look at the title and most Americans, I'm afraid, would say "Whoa! That sounds heavy, no thanks"
To react that way would be a shame as Mumford is a craftsman writing beautifully to make his points clear to anyone who will open these pages. Don't be put off by anxiety that the subject matter is too deep!
* * * * *
You have to read a book like this with an understanding of when it was written - in this case, 1930.
In 1930, the Crash had occurred and the Depression was underway but not at its depths. There was a general fear that Capitalism might have had its day and was broken beyond repair. Many people in America looked to the Soviet Union as an alternative system that distributed the goods of society more evenly across the population, avoiding the bulk of wealth moving to the top while leaving the masses out.
Lewis Mumford was one of those who felt this way and in the last chapters of this book he makes this plain.
But before he does so, he paints a detailed picture of the history of the machine and civilization that had me making notes and dog-earing many pages.
Mumford divides history into three periods. Each starts at a different point but they overlap with characteristics of earlier times extending into the later periods.
The first, the eotechnic period, Mumford equates with that during which the clock was perfected. In this period machines were simple and made with human vitality in mind, that is, what could be devised that would make things easier to do, that would improve life.
Then came the paleotechnic period when quantity was king. How much and how fast could things be turned out by machines? This was the period of gross production and giantism. Machines loomed over the men who worked them and the characteristic industry of the time was mining - where the workplace was inhuman, with lives and health readily sacrificed to keep the machinery working at full tilt. Time is money! The machine is God, the worker is His attendant.
Finally, the neotechnic period arrived. It was realized that quality was to be valued as much or more than quantity. Precision, detail, design aimed at very specific jobs became the hallmarks of technics. The human and environmental costs of the Age of Steam were finally seen as the indicators of a wholesale neglect of the living.
Mumford foresaw a new stage of biotechnics - of technics in the service of humanity - only starting to become evident.
Throughout the book, I was startled by the clarity of Mumford's analysis. His descriptions are sometimes shockingly relevant to modern times. At one point he describes the technical complexity of the modern home - all the plumbing, electrical wiring, heating and ventilation - in comparison to a 16th century cottage. He speaks of how all the complexity must be hidden and made manageable so that it doesn't take our minds off what we want to do within that house. If I may carry this further, imagine an art museum. The lighting is low except upon the artwork, the temperature and humidity are precisely controlled, there is no music and visitors are hushed if they speak at all. This is all because we want all of our attention to be on the art. With the "noise" reduced, our sensitivities are at their height to appreciate what the artists have created for us and every nuance of texture and color can be discriminated. Mumford wishes this to be the case with all technology; that it be in the background not drawing attention to itself.
The man wrote before TV! Can you imagine his reaction to a medium that strives to make as much noise as possible - to present the outrageous as daily fare - to seek out the bizarre and offensive intentionally to assault our senses? True, the actual electronics of TV are invisible and beneath our awareness but what we know as "TV" barges in to our homes and leaves us paralyzed on the couch instead of furthering our mental and physical abilities. Far from exercising the exquisite sensitivities we have, TV puts guns in our faces, violence in our living rooms and perversity front and center - what bizarre thing happened today? Let's look at it!
And what of computers that can always stay 3 steps ahead of us in pace with tiny hand-held variations grasped avidly throughout the day and evening as we ignore our non-electronic surroundings. Time is money has not disappeared with Mumford's paleotechnic period.
So with all of his insight, what does Mumford see for the future standing as he did in 1930? Alas, it is communism...not the dogmatic communism of Marx but the general idea is the same - of the elevation of the common man and the reduction of the plutocrat. Throughout his final two chapters he speaks of rationalizing consumption so that everyone has the necessities in abundance with prices that don't grab a large fraction of income. His vision is of leisure time to allow for the enhancement of the individual mind and of society in general. He speaks of deliberately making things less efficiently than could machines simply to allow people to do work they can enjoy. This all sounds so nice but Mumford neglects to mention that behind it there must always be some group or administration giving orders and setting priorities - saying that this will be done this way and not that way.
If only he could have seen what the Soviet Union would come to! Communism in practice was a disaster. A friend of mine from Russia told me that the social relationships under the USSR were wonderful, but not because this was a goal of the system, rather it was due to the heavy oppression of the system and the dearth of goods that drove people to seek pleasure in the company of others similarly oppressed. This could not have been further from Mumford's mind.
Mumford also speaks repeatedly of the planning of projects to benefit society. I could only think of how oblivious this is to human nature. What happens when people are put in a position of power to plan? They immediately plan for themselves first. The USSR had a class of plutocrats far worse than that of the United States because it was completely closed. At least in this country a garage inventor like Steve Jobs can rise to the top.
In 1930, things looked so bad for Capitalism that prescriptions were to be had from many sources. A common thread was the betterment of the worker. But I keep the individual in mind. Consider the situation today. Is there any reason you or I can't reach for goals of personal betterment even as ordinary wage earners? With the Internet a good part of the knowledge of the world is open to everyone - but how many drink deeply of it rather than finding out the latest sports information or following Lady Gaga (update to Taylor Swift)? (Maybe this is not best from the view of what a human can be, but millions enjoy it. Would these pursuits be something some group directing society would prohibit?
Let society fend for itself as long as I have a good measure of freedom within it. I fear planning from above based on the awful examples of the efforts so far.
But you need not read the final two chapters and their content is no indictment of the author, only an indicator of his times. His analysis of the past is right on the money and provides a solid foundation for any reader who wants to understand not only how we got here from there but how powerfully our machines have made us even as we have been making them.
To react that way would be a shame as Mumford is a craftsman writing beautifully to make his points clear to anyone who will open these pages. Don't be put off by anxiety that the subject matter is too deep!
* * * * *
You have to read a book like this with an understanding of when it was written - in this case, 1930.
In 1930, the Crash had occurred and the Depression was underway but not at its depths. There was a general fear that Capitalism might have had its day and was broken beyond repair. Many people in America looked to the Soviet Union as an alternative system that distributed the goods of society more evenly across the population, avoiding the bulk of wealth moving to the top while leaving the masses out.
Lewis Mumford was one of those who felt this way and in the last chapters of this book he makes this plain.
But before he does so, he paints a detailed picture of the history of the machine and civilization that had me making notes and dog-earing many pages.
Mumford divides history into three periods. Each starts at a different point but they overlap with characteristics of earlier times extending into the later periods.
The first, the eotechnic period, Mumford equates with that during which the clock was perfected. In this period machines were simple and made with human vitality in mind, that is, what could be devised that would make things easier to do, that would improve life.
Then came the paleotechnic period when quantity was king. How much and how fast could things be turned out by machines? This was the period of gross production and giantism. Machines loomed over the men who worked them and the characteristic industry of the time was mining - where the workplace was inhuman, with lives and health readily sacrificed to keep the machinery working at full tilt. Time is money! The machine is God, the worker is His attendant.
Finally, the neotechnic period arrived. It was realized that quality was to be valued as much or more than quantity. Precision, detail, design aimed at very specific jobs became the hallmarks of technics. The human and environmental costs of the Age of Steam were finally seen as the indicators of a wholesale neglect of the living.
Mumford foresaw a new stage of biotechnics - of technics in the service of humanity - only starting to become evident.
Throughout the book, I was startled by the clarity of Mumford's analysis. His descriptions are sometimes shockingly relevant to modern times. At one point he describes the technical complexity of the modern home - all the plumbing, electrical wiring, heating and ventilation - in comparison to a 16th century cottage. He speaks of how all the complexity must be hidden and made manageable so that it doesn't take our minds off what we want to do within that house. If I may carry this further, imagine an art museum. The lighting is low except upon the artwork, the temperature and humidity are precisely controlled, there is no music and visitors are hushed if they speak at all. This is all because we want all of our attention to be on the art. With the "noise" reduced, our sensitivities are at their height to appreciate what the artists have created for us and every nuance of texture and color can be discriminated. Mumford wishes this to be the case with all technology; that it be in the background not drawing attention to itself.
The man wrote before TV! Can you imagine his reaction to a medium that strives to make as much noise as possible - to present the outrageous as daily fare - to seek out the bizarre and offensive intentionally to assault our senses? True, the actual electronics of TV are invisible and beneath our awareness but what we know as "TV" barges in to our homes and leaves us paralyzed on the couch instead of furthering our mental and physical abilities. Far from exercising the exquisite sensitivities we have, TV puts guns in our faces, violence in our living rooms and perversity front and center - what bizarre thing happened today? Let's look at it!
And what of computers that can always stay 3 steps ahead of us in pace with tiny hand-held variations grasped avidly throughout the day and evening as we ignore our non-electronic surroundings. Time is money has not disappeared with Mumford's paleotechnic period.
So with all of his insight, what does Mumford see for the future standing as he did in 1930? Alas, it is communism...not the dogmatic communism of Marx but the general idea is the same - of the elevation of the common man and the reduction of the plutocrat. Throughout his final two chapters he speaks of rationalizing consumption so that everyone has the necessities in abundance with prices that don't grab a large fraction of income. His vision is of leisure time to allow for the enhancement of the individual mind and of society in general. He speaks of deliberately making things less efficiently than could machines simply to allow people to do work they can enjoy. This all sounds so nice but Mumford neglects to mention that behind it there must always be some group or administration giving orders and setting priorities - saying that this will be done this way and not that way.
If only he could have seen what the Soviet Union would come to! Communism in practice was a disaster. A friend of mine from Russia told me that the social relationships under the USSR were wonderful, but not because this was a goal of the system, rather it was due to the heavy oppression of the system and the dearth of goods that drove people to seek pleasure in the company of others similarly oppressed. This could not have been further from Mumford's mind.
Mumford also speaks repeatedly of the planning of projects to benefit society. I could only think of how oblivious this is to human nature. What happens when people are put in a position of power to plan? They immediately plan for themselves first. The USSR had a class of plutocrats far worse than that of the United States because it was completely closed. At least in this country a garage inventor like Steve Jobs can rise to the top.
In 1930, things looked so bad for Capitalism that prescriptions were to be had from many sources. A common thread was the betterment of the worker. But I keep the individual in mind. Consider the situation today. Is there any reason you or I can't reach for goals of personal betterment even as ordinary wage earners? With the Internet a good part of the knowledge of the world is open to everyone - but how many drink deeply of it rather than finding out the latest sports information or following Lady Gaga (update to Taylor Swift)? (Maybe this is not best from the view of what a human can be, but millions enjoy it. Would these pursuits be something some group directing society would prohibit?
Let society fend for itself as long as I have a good measure of freedom within it. I fear planning from above based on the awful examples of the efforts so far.
But you need not read the final two chapters and their content is no indictment of the author, only an indicator of his times. His analysis of the past is right on the money and provides a solid foundation for any reader who wants to understand not only how we got here from there but how powerfully our machines have made us even as we have been making them.
April 7, 2018
I'm not sure how anyone gives this less than 5 stars. Written in 1934, it is as relevant now as it ever was. So many quotable pieces in this book. His overall premise that people have misunderstood the idea that it's progress is not about machines, it's about how they let humans organize differently. Wow, that idea has been lost. I almost began to present it new. Now, I will simply quote it in the book I'm writing.
Pg 10: "The Essential distinction between a machine and a tool lies in the degree of independence in the operation from the skill and motive power of the operator: the tool lends itself to manipulation, the machine to automatic action." He goes onto to describe the distinction to surround the idea that we are separated from our work by the machine.
Pg 23-25 - He reminds us of what Marx has to say about the commodity money and how it's history this transformed into a series of conceptual ways in which individuals exert power. He then talks about the impact of the invention of the clock as the great coordinator of human behavior. I think a whole book could be written on the clock. Indeed, I read a book about the clock and it's contributions, but to shipping. The idea that it helped push people into a paradigm of coordinated action, now that is something! The book doesn't go into this enough IMO, likely because Mumford didn't live to see today.
P. 110 "The machine cannot be divorced from its larger social pattern; for it is this pattern that gives it meaning and purpose. Every period of civilization carries within it the insignificant refuse of past technologies and the important germs of new ones..."
p. 184 "Unlike the organic patters of movement through space and time, the cycle of growth and decay, the balanced motion of the dancer, the statement and return of the musical composition, progress was motion toward infinity, motion without completion or end, motion for motion's sake. One could not have too much progress; it could not come too rapidly; it could not spread too widely; and it could not destroy the "unprogressive" elements in society too swiftly and ruthlessly: for progress was a good in itself independent of direction or end.
p. 185 "Life was judged by the extent to which it ministered to progress, progress was not judged by the extent to which it ministered to life."
This is incorrect, but interesting nonetheless. There are many metrics that are not easily disputed, lifespan, increase in choice, inclusiveness, etc.
p. 277 "The point is that efficiency is currently confused with adaptability to large-scale factory production and marketing: that is to say with fitness for present methods of commercial exploitation. But in terms of social life, may of the most extravagant advance of the machine have proved to rest on the invention of intricate means of doing things which can be performed at a minor cost by very simple ones. "
He uses the example of comedians who - at the time it was popular - build crazy machines to do really simple things like lick a stamp. Huge in size and making no sense, except mechanization for its own sake.
P. 387 "In its crude state, industry prides itself upon gross use of power and machinery. In its advanced state, it rests upon rational organization, social control, physiological and psychological understanding.
He goes on to say that the crude state requires use of force and power to exert itself. In the advanced state, no part is not up for criticism and rational criteria. You revise the machine to fit the need, not fit the need to the machine.
It's amazing. I can't believe this was written in 1932 and here we are still trying to sort it all out. I want to read all this guy's stuff.
Pg 10: "The Essential distinction between a machine and a tool lies in the degree of independence in the operation from the skill and motive power of the operator: the tool lends itself to manipulation, the machine to automatic action." He goes onto to describe the distinction to surround the idea that we are separated from our work by the machine.
Pg 23-25 - He reminds us of what Marx has to say about the commodity money and how it's history this transformed into a series of conceptual ways in which individuals exert power. He then talks about the impact of the invention of the clock as the great coordinator of human behavior. I think a whole book could be written on the clock. Indeed, I read a book about the clock and it's contributions, but to shipping. The idea that it helped push people into a paradigm of coordinated action, now that is something! The book doesn't go into this enough IMO, likely because Mumford didn't live to see today.
P. 110 "The machine cannot be divorced from its larger social pattern; for it is this pattern that gives it meaning and purpose. Every period of civilization carries within it the insignificant refuse of past technologies and the important germs of new ones..."
p. 184 "Unlike the organic patters of movement through space and time, the cycle of growth and decay, the balanced motion of the dancer, the statement and return of the musical composition, progress was motion toward infinity, motion without completion or end, motion for motion's sake. One could not have too much progress; it could not come too rapidly; it could not spread too widely; and it could not destroy the "unprogressive" elements in society too swiftly and ruthlessly: for progress was a good in itself independent of direction or end.
p. 185 "Life was judged by the extent to which it ministered to progress, progress was not judged by the extent to which it ministered to life."
This is incorrect, but interesting nonetheless. There are many metrics that are not easily disputed, lifespan, increase in choice, inclusiveness, etc.
p. 277 "The point is that efficiency is currently confused with adaptability to large-scale factory production and marketing: that is to say with fitness for present methods of commercial exploitation. But in terms of social life, may of the most extravagant advance of the machine have proved to rest on the invention of intricate means of doing things which can be performed at a minor cost by very simple ones. "
He uses the example of comedians who - at the time it was popular - build crazy machines to do really simple things like lick a stamp. Huge in size and making no sense, except mechanization for its own sake.
P. 387 "In its crude state, industry prides itself upon gross use of power and machinery. In its advanced state, it rests upon rational organization, social control, physiological and psychological understanding.
He goes on to say that the crude state requires use of force and power to exert itself. In the advanced state, no part is not up for criticism and rational criteria. You revise the machine to fit the need, not fit the need to the machine.
It's amazing. I can't believe this was written in 1932 and here we are still trying to sort it all out. I want to read all this guy's stuff.
October 13, 2021
El este actualísimo estudio interdisciplinar, el autor rastrea los inicios de la técnica tras la caída de Roma y va deshilando poco a poco el ovillo del modo de producción capitalista para llegar a sus albores en la mina, el monasterio y el campo de batalla. A través de un repaso de los pricipales inventos ocurridos a lo largo e la Edad Media y en adelante, Mumford traza el nacimiento de una civilización que descansa sobre la tecnología y que mira hacia el mundo con las gafas de la mecánica y la física. Tres son los momentos que postula: la fase eotécnica, primitivo en sus medios y en las fuentes de energía, la paleotécnica que se inició con el uso de los hidrocarburos y del vapor y, finalmente, la fase neotécnica, al que el autor asegura que se está llegando en el momento en el que escribe (1930). A cada etapa le corresponden unos materiales de construcción, unas herrmanientas, unos modos de producción y unas fuentes de energía particulares. Sin embargo, no son etapas que se sucedan linealmente en el tiempo, sino que conviven en diferentes grados según el lugar.
En la segunda parte del libro, Mumford hace una crítica a la máquina y a su utilización. Con una actitud increíblemente asertiva, disecciona aquellas partes de la máquina deseables de las indeseables o dañinas para el ser humano, utilizando como referencia en todo momento la vida y la biología. Es decir, propone que todo aquello que fomente la vida y la fortalezca es deseable y que todos los excesos y progresos descontrolados provocados por la ambición capitalista son esencialmente dañinos y por ello despreciables. Llega incluso a proponer un comunismo elemental como modelo para una sociedad sana y estable, cuya actividades principales sean la creación y el juego, posible gracias a la máquina y su asución de todo el trabajo mecánico y automático.
Sin duda es una gran lectura que recomiendo a todo el mundo, tanto por su contenido como por el transfondo del pensamiento del autor. Me sorprende que este excelente texto no sea más conocido. Incluso no me parecería muy extraño que existiese un mumfordismo, aunque el mismo Mumford reconoció que seguramente su obra sería relegada al olvido forzosamente por los especialistas del futuro.
En la segunda parte del libro, Mumford hace una crítica a la máquina y a su utilización. Con una actitud increíblemente asertiva, disecciona aquellas partes de la máquina deseables de las indeseables o dañinas para el ser humano, utilizando como referencia en todo momento la vida y la biología. Es decir, propone que todo aquello que fomente la vida y la fortalezca es deseable y que todos los excesos y progresos descontrolados provocados por la ambición capitalista son esencialmente dañinos y por ello despreciables. Llega incluso a proponer un comunismo elemental como modelo para una sociedad sana y estable, cuya actividades principales sean la creación y el juego, posible gracias a la máquina y su asución de todo el trabajo mecánico y automático.
Sin duda es una gran lectura que recomiendo a todo el mundo, tanto por su contenido como por el transfondo del pensamiento del autor. Me sorprende que este excelente texto no sea más conocido. Incluso no me parecería muy extraño que existiese un mumfordismo, aunque el mismo Mumford reconoció que seguramente su obra sería relegada al olvido forzosamente por los especialistas del futuro.
March 20, 2021
As usual Mumford gives an avalanche of insight. In this big volume he explores how the development of technology has shaped our awareness, and our awareness has transformed technology.
June 23, 2023
4.5 stars.
A classic in the history of technology, which I first encountered when reading Terry Reynolds’ book on the history of the vertical waterwheel. Lewis Mumford (along with Harold Laski and Clifton Fadiman) was one of the influences for Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead character, Ellsworth Toohey, an egalitarian socialist who personified evil for Rand.
The scope of this book is magisterial, perhaps too ambitious, but it offers the sort of scope that matches the period in which it was written. Histories of technology today are far more modest and narrow, but it is rather enjoyable to read such a sweeping account of technological history.
I have rarely seen Lewis Mumford directly called a Marxist or even a socialist, but near the end of this book, he very clearly calls for the socialization of capital (both natural and mechanized):
“Unless we socialize creation, unless we make production subservient to education, a mechanized system of production, however efficient, will only harden into a servile byzantine formality, enriched by bread and circuses.”
“So, too, mechanization, by lessening the need for domestic service, has increased the amount of personal autonomy and personal participation in the household. In short, mechanization creates new occasions for human effort; and on the whole the effects are more educative than were the semi-automatic services of slaves and menials in the older civilizations. For the mechanical nullification of skill can take place only up to a certain point. It is only when one has completely lost the power of discrimination that a standardized canned soup can, without further preparation, take the place of a home-cooked one, or when one has lost prudence completely that a four-wheel brake can serve instead of a good driver. Inventions like these increase the province and multiply the interests of the amateur. When automatism becomes general and the benefits of mechanization are socialized, men will be back once more in the Edenlike state in which they have existed in regions of natural increment, like the South Seas: the ritual of leisure will replace the ritual of work, and work itself will become a kind of game. That is, in fact, the ideal goal of a completely mechanized and automatized system of power production: the elimination of work: the universal achievement of leisure. In his discussion of slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man’s interaction with his environment,' if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life…”
This was an interesting comment on energy as it relates to socially necessary labour:
“The real significance of the machine, socially speaking, does not consist either in the multiplication of goods or the multiplication of wants, real or illusory. Its significance lies in the gains of energy through increased conversion, through efficient production, through balanced consumption, and through socialized creation. The test of economic success does not, therefore, lie in the industrial process alone, and it cannot be measured by the amount of horsepower converted or by the amount commanded by an individual user; for the important factors here are not quantities but ratios: ratios of mechanical effort to social and cultural results. A society in which production and consumption completely cancelled out the gains of conversion in which people worked to live and lived to work—would remain socially inefficient, even if the entire population were constantly employed, and adequately fed, clothed, and sheltered. The ultimate test, of an efficient industry is the ratio between productive means and the achieved ends. Hence a society with a low scale of conversion but with a high amount of creation is humanly speaking superior to a society with an enormous panoply of converters and a small and inadequate army of creators. By the ruthless pillage of the food-producing territories of Asia and Africa, the Roman Empire appropriated far more energy than Greece, with its sparse abstemious dietary and its low standard of living. But Rome produced no poem, no statue, no original architecture, no work of science, no philosophy comparable to the Odyssey, the Parthenon, the works of sixth and fifth century sculptors, and the science of Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Hero; and so the quantitative grandeur and luxury and power of the Romans, despite their extraordinary capacity as engineers, remained relatively meaningless: even for the continued development of technics the work of the Greek mathematicians and physicists was more important. This is why no working ideal for machine production can be based solely on the gospel of work: still less can it be based upon an uncritical belief in constantly raising the quantitative standard of consumption.
To fancy that such a non-profit system is an impossibility is to forget that for thousands of years the mass of mankind knew no other system. The new economy of needs, replacing the capitalist economy of acquisition, will put the limited corporations and communities of the old economy on a broader and more intelligently socialized basis; but at bottom it will draw upon and canalize similar impulses. Despite all its chequered features and internal contradictions, this is to date perhaps the chief promise held out by Soviet Russia. To the extent that industry must still employ human beings as machines, the hours of work must be reduced. We must determine the number of hours of blank routine per week that is within the limits of human tolerance, beyond which obvious deterioration of mind and spirit sets in.”
Mumford quotes Marx at length a few times. This is one instance:
"Karl Marx well summed up this new process of transmutation; “Since money does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, whether a commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and purchasable. Circulation is the great social retort into which everything is thrown and out of which everything is recovered as crystallized money. Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy; and still less able to withstand it are more delicate things, sacrosanct things which are outside the commercial traffic of men. Just as all qualitative differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of an individual. Thus social power becomes private power in the hands of a private person.” This last fact was particularly important for life and thought: the quest of power by means of abstractions. One abstraction re-enforced the other. Time was money: money was power: power required the furtherance of trade and production: production was diverted from the channels of direct use into those of remote trade, toward the acquisition of larger profits, with a larger margin for new capital expenditures for wars, foreign conquests, mines, productive enterprises . . . more money and more power."
And finally, an excerpt I’d like to finish for, it’s Mumford explaining the necessity of revolution:
“In concluding his monumental survey of Capitalism Sombart looks upon 1914 as a turning-point for capitalism itself. The signs of the change are the impregnation of capitalistic modes of existence "with normative ideas: the displacement of the struggle for profit as the sole condition of orientation in industrial relations, the undermining of private competition through the principle of understandings, and the constitutional organization of industrial enterprise. These processes, which have actually begun under capitalism, have only to be pushed to their logical conclusions to carry us beyond the capitalist order. Rationalization, standardization, and above all, rationed production and consumption, on the scale necessary to bring up to a vital norm the consumptive level of the whole community—these things are impossible on a sufficient scale without a socialized political control of the entire process.
If such a control cannot be instituted with the cooperation and intelligent aid of the existing administrators of industry, it must be achieved by overthrowing them and displacing them. The application of new norms of consumption, as in the housing of workers, has during the last thirty years won the passive support, sometimes subsidies drawn from taxation, of the existing governments of Europe, from conservative London to communistically bent Moscow. But such communities, while they have challenged and supplemented capitalist enterprise, are merely indications of the way in which the wind is blowing. Before we can replan and reorder our entire environment, on a scale commensurate with our human needs, the moral and legal and political basis of our productive system will have to be sharply revised. Unless such a revision takes place, capitalism itself will be eliminated by internal rot: lethal struggles will take place between states seeking to save themselves by imperialist conquest, as they will take place between classes within the state, jockeying for a power which will take the form of brute force just to the extent that society’s grip on the productive mechanism itself is weakened.”
I included a very narrow range of excerpts from this book, because they were of political interest to me, and somewhat surprising to find. But the majority of this book is more historical in nature, and would be very enjoyable to those more interested in the history of technology than little ardent manifestos in defense of communism.
A classic in the history of technology, which I first encountered when reading Terry Reynolds’ book on the history of the vertical waterwheel. Lewis Mumford (along with Harold Laski and Clifton Fadiman) was one of the influences for Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead character, Ellsworth Toohey, an egalitarian socialist who personified evil for Rand.
The scope of this book is magisterial, perhaps too ambitious, but it offers the sort of scope that matches the period in which it was written. Histories of technology today are far more modest and narrow, but it is rather enjoyable to read such a sweeping account of technological history.
I have rarely seen Lewis Mumford directly called a Marxist or even a socialist, but near the end of this book, he very clearly calls for the socialization of capital (both natural and mechanized):
“Unless we socialize creation, unless we make production subservient to education, a mechanized system of production, however efficient, will only harden into a servile byzantine formality, enriched by bread and circuses.”
“So, too, mechanization, by lessening the need for domestic service, has increased the amount of personal autonomy and personal participation in the household. In short, mechanization creates new occasions for human effort; and on the whole the effects are more educative than were the semi-automatic services of slaves and menials in the older civilizations. For the mechanical nullification of skill can take place only up to a certain point. It is only when one has completely lost the power of discrimination that a standardized canned soup can, without further preparation, take the place of a home-cooked one, or when one has lost prudence completely that a four-wheel brake can serve instead of a good driver. Inventions like these increase the province and multiply the interests of the amateur. When automatism becomes general and the benefits of mechanization are socialized, men will be back once more in the Edenlike state in which they have existed in regions of natural increment, like the South Seas: the ritual of leisure will replace the ritual of work, and work itself will become a kind of game. That is, in fact, the ideal goal of a completely mechanized and automatized system of power production: the elimination of work: the universal achievement of leisure. In his discussion of slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man’s interaction with his environment,' if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life…”
This was an interesting comment on energy as it relates to socially necessary labour:
“The real significance of the machine, socially speaking, does not consist either in the multiplication of goods or the multiplication of wants, real or illusory. Its significance lies in the gains of energy through increased conversion, through efficient production, through balanced consumption, and through socialized creation. The test of economic success does not, therefore, lie in the industrial process alone, and it cannot be measured by the amount of horsepower converted or by the amount commanded by an individual user; for the important factors here are not quantities but ratios: ratios of mechanical effort to social and cultural results. A society in which production and consumption completely cancelled out the gains of conversion in which people worked to live and lived to work—would remain socially inefficient, even if the entire population were constantly employed, and adequately fed, clothed, and sheltered. The ultimate test, of an efficient industry is the ratio between productive means and the achieved ends. Hence a society with a low scale of conversion but with a high amount of creation is humanly speaking superior to a society with an enormous panoply of converters and a small and inadequate army of creators. By the ruthless pillage of the food-producing territories of Asia and Africa, the Roman Empire appropriated far more energy than Greece, with its sparse abstemious dietary and its low standard of living. But Rome produced no poem, no statue, no original architecture, no work of science, no philosophy comparable to the Odyssey, the Parthenon, the works of sixth and fifth century sculptors, and the science of Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Hero; and so the quantitative grandeur and luxury and power of the Romans, despite their extraordinary capacity as engineers, remained relatively meaningless: even for the continued development of technics the work of the Greek mathematicians and physicists was more important. This is why no working ideal for machine production can be based solely on the gospel of work: still less can it be based upon an uncritical belief in constantly raising the quantitative standard of consumption.
To fancy that such a non-profit system is an impossibility is to forget that for thousands of years the mass of mankind knew no other system. The new economy of needs, replacing the capitalist economy of acquisition, will put the limited corporations and communities of the old economy on a broader and more intelligently socialized basis; but at bottom it will draw upon and canalize similar impulses. Despite all its chequered features and internal contradictions, this is to date perhaps the chief promise held out by Soviet Russia. To the extent that industry must still employ human beings as machines, the hours of work must be reduced. We must determine the number of hours of blank routine per week that is within the limits of human tolerance, beyond which obvious deterioration of mind and spirit sets in.”
Mumford quotes Marx at length a few times. This is one instance:
"Karl Marx well summed up this new process of transmutation; “Since money does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, whether a commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and purchasable. Circulation is the great social retort into which everything is thrown and out of which everything is recovered as crystallized money. Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy; and still less able to withstand it are more delicate things, sacrosanct things which are outside the commercial traffic of men. Just as all qualitative differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of an individual. Thus social power becomes private power in the hands of a private person.” This last fact was particularly important for life and thought: the quest of power by means of abstractions. One abstraction re-enforced the other. Time was money: money was power: power required the furtherance of trade and production: production was diverted from the channels of direct use into those of remote trade, toward the acquisition of larger profits, with a larger margin for new capital expenditures for wars, foreign conquests, mines, productive enterprises . . . more money and more power."
And finally, an excerpt I’d like to finish for, it’s Mumford explaining the necessity of revolution:
“In concluding his monumental survey of Capitalism Sombart looks upon 1914 as a turning-point for capitalism itself. The signs of the change are the impregnation of capitalistic modes of existence "with normative ideas: the displacement of the struggle for profit as the sole condition of orientation in industrial relations, the undermining of private competition through the principle of understandings, and the constitutional organization of industrial enterprise. These processes, which have actually begun under capitalism, have only to be pushed to their logical conclusions to carry us beyond the capitalist order. Rationalization, standardization, and above all, rationed production and consumption, on the scale necessary to bring up to a vital norm the consumptive level of the whole community—these things are impossible on a sufficient scale without a socialized political control of the entire process.
If such a control cannot be instituted with the cooperation and intelligent aid of the existing administrators of industry, it must be achieved by overthrowing them and displacing them. The application of new norms of consumption, as in the housing of workers, has during the last thirty years won the passive support, sometimes subsidies drawn from taxation, of the existing governments of Europe, from conservative London to communistically bent Moscow. But such communities, while they have challenged and supplemented capitalist enterprise, are merely indications of the way in which the wind is blowing. Before we can replan and reorder our entire environment, on a scale commensurate with our human needs, the moral and legal and political basis of our productive system will have to be sharply revised. Unless such a revision takes place, capitalism itself will be eliminated by internal rot: lethal struggles will take place between states seeking to save themselves by imperialist conquest, as they will take place between classes within the state, jockeying for a power which will take the form of brute force just to the extent that society’s grip on the productive mechanism itself is weakened.”
I included a very narrow range of excerpts from this book, because they were of political interest to me, and somewhat surprising to find. But the majority of this book is more historical in nature, and would be very enjoyable to those more interested in the history of technology than little ardent manifestos in defense of communism.
November 27, 2011
I just don't understand why I didn't read this before: the most important book about the history of technology, the history of media, the history of power, OUR history.
June 16, 2023
“Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford, first published in 1934, stands as a seminal work in the field of technology and society. Mumford, an American historian and philosopher, offers a comprehensive exploration of the historical development and social implications of technology. In this academic review, we delve into the key themes, strengths, limitations, and scholarly significance of Mumford's work, highlighting its contributions to our understanding of the complex relationship between technology and civilization.
"Technics and Civilization" undertakes a sweeping analysis of the interplay between technology and societal progress. Mumford argues that technology is not merely a neutral tool but a cultural force that shapes and is shaped by society. He examines the historical trajectory of technology, from the early forms of technics to the industrial revolution and beyond, tracing its impact on various aspects of civilization, including politics, economics, art, and human relationships.
One of the strengths of Mumford's analysis lies in his multidisciplinary approach, drawing insights from history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. He explores the social and psychological effects of technological advancements, shedding light on how technology influences social organization, values, and individual experience. Mumford's comprehensive examination situates technology within its broader cultural context, avoiding deterministic perspectives and emphasizing the interplay between technological development and societal choices.
Moreover, Mumford's work challenges the prevailing notion of progress as purely technological and encourages a reevaluation of the ends and means of technological innovation. He calls for a humanistic approach to technology, advocating for a conscious and intentional shaping of technology to serve human needs and foster sustainable and harmonious societies. Mumford's critique of technological determinism and his emphasis on the importance of cultural values contribute to a nuanced understanding of the relationship between technology and civilization.
However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of Mumford's work. Some critics argue that his analysis could benefit from a deeper engagement with the role of power dynamics and social inequalities in shaping technological developments. Additionally, the book's historical focus may limit its direct applicability to contemporary technological challenges.
"Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford is a significant contribution to the study of technology and society. Mumford's multidisciplinary approach, historical depth, and humanistic perspective offer valuable insights into the complex interplay between technology and civilization. The book's strengths lie in its nuanced understanding of technology as a cultural force and its call for a conscious and intentional shaping of technology in service of human needs and societal well-being.
The scholarly significance of Mumford's work is evident in its enduring influence on the field of technology studies. His critique of technological determinism and his exploration of the social and psychological effects of technology continue to resonate with contemporary scholars and policymakers alike. The book serves as a reminder of the importance of critically engaging with and shaping technological advancements to ensure their alignment with human values and sustainable futures.
"Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford stands as a seminal work that illuminates the intricate relationship between technology and society. While acknowledging its limitations, this academic review recognizes the scholarly significance and enduring relevance of Mumford's analysis. By emphasizing the cultural and societal dimensions of technology and advocating for a humanistic approach, Mumford invites readers to critically reflect on the impact of technology on civilization and the imperative of consciously shaping technological development for the betterment of society.
GPT
"Technics and Civilization" undertakes a sweeping analysis of the interplay between technology and societal progress. Mumford argues that technology is not merely a neutral tool but a cultural force that shapes and is shaped by society. He examines the historical trajectory of technology, from the early forms of technics to the industrial revolution and beyond, tracing its impact on various aspects of civilization, including politics, economics, art, and human relationships.
One of the strengths of Mumford's analysis lies in his multidisciplinary approach, drawing insights from history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. He explores the social and psychological effects of technological advancements, shedding light on how technology influences social organization, values, and individual experience. Mumford's comprehensive examination situates technology within its broader cultural context, avoiding deterministic perspectives and emphasizing the interplay between technological development and societal choices.
Moreover, Mumford's work challenges the prevailing notion of progress as purely technological and encourages a reevaluation of the ends and means of technological innovation. He calls for a humanistic approach to technology, advocating for a conscious and intentional shaping of technology to serve human needs and foster sustainable and harmonious societies. Mumford's critique of technological determinism and his emphasis on the importance of cultural values contribute to a nuanced understanding of the relationship between technology and civilization.
However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of Mumford's work. Some critics argue that his analysis could benefit from a deeper engagement with the role of power dynamics and social inequalities in shaping technological developments. Additionally, the book's historical focus may limit its direct applicability to contemporary technological challenges.
"Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford is a significant contribution to the study of technology and society. Mumford's multidisciplinary approach, historical depth, and humanistic perspective offer valuable insights into the complex interplay between technology and civilization. The book's strengths lie in its nuanced understanding of technology as a cultural force and its call for a conscious and intentional shaping of technology in service of human needs and societal well-being.
The scholarly significance of Mumford's work is evident in its enduring influence on the field of technology studies. His critique of technological determinism and his exploration of the social and psychological effects of technology continue to resonate with contemporary scholars and policymakers alike. The book serves as a reminder of the importance of critically engaging with and shaping technological advancements to ensure their alignment with human values and sustainable futures.
"Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford stands as a seminal work that illuminates the intricate relationship between technology and society. While acknowledging its limitations, this academic review recognizes the scholarly significance and enduring relevance of Mumford's analysis. By emphasizing the cultural and societal dimensions of technology and advocating for a humanistic approach, Mumford invites readers to critically reflect on the impact of technology on civilization and the imperative of consciously shaping technological development for the betterment of society.
GPT
June 24, 2015
An interesting book, although I got seriously bogged down in the final third or so when he discusses his own emerging technical period (the "neotechnic" as he called it)
For a book that is all about material culture it is very idealistic, Mumford is constantly talking about how the paleotechnic phase (generally the late 18th through early 20th centuries, what most people would call the industrial revolution) was dominated by the 'spirit of the miner' and so on. I was also disturbed by his seemingly approving quotation of Oswald Spengler; in particular he mentions the concept of the pseudomorph:
"Spengler points to the common fact in geology that a rock may retain its structure after certain elements have been leached out of it and been replaced by an entirely different kind of material. Since the apparent structure of the old rock remains, the new product is termed a pseudomorph. A similar metamorphosis is possible in culture: new forces, activities, institutions, instead of crystallizing independently into their own appropriate forms, may creep into the structure of an existing civilization. This perhaps is the essential fact of our present situation."
This strikes me as a very naive adopting of a very sinister concept. Elsewhere in the book Mumford seems to have at most a dignified distaste for Fascism generally, although he does end it with a call for a "basic communism" in social relations to match the new technologies, which seems to be made up primarily of a universal basic income and some sort of syndicalism.
For a book that is all about material culture it is very idealistic, Mumford is constantly talking about how the paleotechnic phase (generally the late 18th through early 20th centuries, what most people would call the industrial revolution) was dominated by the 'spirit of the miner' and so on. I was also disturbed by his seemingly approving quotation of Oswald Spengler; in particular he mentions the concept of the pseudomorph:
"Spengler points to the common fact in geology that a rock may retain its structure after certain elements have been leached out of it and been replaced by an entirely different kind of material. Since the apparent structure of the old rock remains, the new product is termed a pseudomorph. A similar metamorphosis is possible in culture: new forces, activities, institutions, instead of crystallizing independently into their own appropriate forms, may creep into the structure of an existing civilization. This perhaps is the essential fact of our present situation."
This strikes me as a very naive adopting of a very sinister concept. Elsewhere in the book Mumford seems to have at most a dignified distaste for Fascism generally, although he does end it with a call for a "basic communism" in social relations to match the new technologies, which seems to be made up primarily of a universal basic income and some sort of syndicalism.
February 19, 2021
This is a book that invites one to contemplate the western world’s transformation under the influence of evolving technics. As history, and as social criticism, portions are outdated. However, Mumford writes so beautifully and insightfully as to secure his work’s position as one of those rare academic masterpieces that can stand the brunt of time. Technics and Civilization may be a tome in size, but it does not read like one. With consistently dazzling prose, a knack for metaphor, and precise, often humorous expression, Mumford takes the reader on a journey through time to witness the technological and social changes that define the modern era, illustrating his theses with encyclopedic detail. Many of his topical sub-chapters could be profitably read as essays in their own right, but the thread of his story is never lost. Mumford is a humanist, above all interested in how the advance in technics can be directed to prosperity and the arts of life; agree or disagree with his conclusions, he has given us a powerful and wide-ranging analysis that we may still find worth chewing on for decades to come.
November 25, 2015
If you don't want to know shit about the world you inhabit than don't read this book. If you do.... Get to it bitch!
November 18, 2024
Kitap; geçmişte, sanayi devrimi öncesinde, aydınlanma devrinde teknolojiye, bilime olan güvenin, makinenin insanın en büyük yardımcısı olması idealinin Kapitalizm ile nasıl tam ters bir etki yarattığını ve yaşamı o aydınlık gelecek yerine neden bu kadar düzensiz, tehlikeli hale getirdiğini sorgulayıp, çözümlüyor.
Teknik şüphesiz olarak kapitalizme ve benzer şekilde savaşa gerçekten borçlu olsa da, makinenin başlangıçta bu yabancı kurumlar tarafından şekillenmesi ve özünde teknik süreçler ve iş biçimleri ile hiçbir alakası olmayan karakteristik özellikler taşımaya başlaması talihsiz bir olaydır. Kapitalizm makineden sosyal refahı ilerletmek için değil, kişisel kârı arttırmak için faydalanmış, mekanik aletleri yönetimi elinde bulunduran sınıfların gücünü ve servetini büyütmek için kullanmıştır. Tarafsız bir aktör olan makinenin çoğu zaman topluma zararlı, insan hayatına kayıtsız, insan çıkarlarına umursamayan bir öğe olarak görünmesi ve hatta bazen öyle olması, kapitalizmdeki ayırt edici niteliklerin bir sonucudur.
Biz bugün teknolojinin gelişiminde organik olanın makineyi domine etmeye başladığı bir noktaya gelmiş bulunmaktayız. Biz, organik olanı basitleştirerek anlaşılır bir şekilde mekanikleştirmeli, mekanik olanı, daha organik bir hale getirmeli, böylece daha etkili ve bizim içinde yaşadığımız çevreyle daha uyumlu hale getirme amacıyla makine ve organik hayatı kaynaştırmaya çalışmalıyız. Kısacası makine, Neo teknik evresinde, düşünce hayatında ve sosyal hayatta taze bir kaynaşma noktası olarak işlev görmektedir. Biz makineyi ve teknolojiyi, insan hayatı ve refahı ile uyumlu bir hale getirmeliyiz. Teknolojiyi ve bilimi, İnsanları bölüp, savaş, sömürü ve yok etme kültürüne hizmet etmek için kullanmaktansa, aydınlık, huzurlu bir geleceği inşa etme yolunda kullanmalıyız. Bu'da bir zihniyet değişikliğini gerektiriyor.
Yani kitabın vardığı sonuç sosyalist bir noktaya varıyor denebilir. Teknoloji (Bilim) ne şekilde kullanıldığına bağlı olarak cenneti'de cehennemi'de yaşatabilir. Ancak şu anki vahşi Kapitalist sömürü düzeninde teknolojinin insanlığa, refaha, adaletli ilerlemeye yönelik kullanılması mümkün değil. Bu nedenle uygarlığımızı, insanlığa yararlı hale getirmek zorundayız.
Kitabın olumsuz tarafı, gereksiz uzun anlatım ve örneklemeler, kitabı okumayı zorlaştırıp sıkıyor. Ancak dönemine göre ve hâlâ teknolojinin, bilimin ve insanlığın gelişimini anlatması açısından çığır açmış bir başyapıt.
Teknik şüphesiz olarak kapitalizme ve benzer şekilde savaşa gerçekten borçlu olsa da, makinenin başlangıçta bu yabancı kurumlar tarafından şekillenmesi ve özünde teknik süreçler ve iş biçimleri ile hiçbir alakası olmayan karakteristik özellikler taşımaya başlaması talihsiz bir olaydır. Kapitalizm makineden sosyal refahı ilerletmek için değil, kişisel kârı arttırmak için faydalanmış, mekanik aletleri yönetimi elinde bulunduran sınıfların gücünü ve servetini büyütmek için kullanmıştır. Tarafsız bir aktör olan makinenin çoğu zaman topluma zararlı, insan hayatına kayıtsız, insan çıkarlarına umursamayan bir öğe olarak görünmesi ve hatta bazen öyle olması, kapitalizmdeki ayırt edici niteliklerin bir sonucudur.
Biz bugün teknolojinin gelişiminde organik olanın makineyi domine etmeye başladığı bir noktaya gelmiş bulunmaktayız. Biz, organik olanı basitleştirerek anlaşılır bir şekilde mekanikleştirmeli, mekanik olanı, daha organik bir hale getirmeli, böylece daha etkili ve bizim içinde yaşadığımız çevreyle daha uyumlu hale getirme amacıyla makine ve organik hayatı kaynaştırmaya çalışmalıyız. Kısacası makine, Neo teknik evresinde, düşünce hayatında ve sosyal hayatta taze bir kaynaşma noktası olarak işlev görmektedir. Biz makineyi ve teknolojiyi, insan hayatı ve refahı ile uyumlu bir hale getirmeliyiz. Teknolojiyi ve bilimi, İnsanları bölüp, savaş, sömürü ve yok etme kültürüne hizmet etmek için kullanmaktansa, aydınlık, huzurlu bir geleceği inşa etme yolunda kullanmalıyız. Bu'da bir zihniyet değişikliğini gerektiriyor.
Yani kitabın vardığı sonuç sosyalist bir noktaya varıyor denebilir. Teknoloji (Bilim) ne şekilde kullanıldığına bağlı olarak cenneti'de cehennemi'de yaşatabilir. Ancak şu anki vahşi Kapitalist sömürü düzeninde teknolojinin insanlığa, refaha, adaletli ilerlemeye yönelik kullanılması mümkün değil. Bu nedenle uygarlığımızı, insanlığa yararlı hale getirmek zorundayız.
Kitabın olumsuz tarafı, gereksiz uzun anlatım ve örneklemeler, kitabı okumayı zorlaştırıp sıkıyor. Ancak dönemine göre ve hâlâ teknolojinin, bilimin ve insanlığın gelişimini anlatması açısından çığır açmış bir başyapıt.
Read
April 19, 2019Here's how long it's been since I last read Lewis Mumford. His sons were just getting famous for making white people in North Face "dance" to bullshit "folk" music, and I wondered, foolishly, if they'd named themselves after this sensitive, quasi-Marxist intellectual (of course they weren't).
This is an important book because it negated a lot of the theory of technical development at the time -- that technology possessed an internal logic and developmental path independent of human endeavor. Granted, much of his theoretical basis is suspect. As in The City in History, he focuses more or less exclusively on the "West" as it was defined mid-century, and so a lot of good evidence is elided. Oh, and being a mid-century book, don't expect quantitative evidence of any kind. But it's an interesting enough theoretical framework, and should be more widely read.
This is an important book because it negated a lot of the theory of technical development at the time -- that technology possessed an internal logic and developmental path independent of human endeavor. Granted, much of his theoretical basis is suspect. As in The City in History, he focuses more or less exclusively on the "West" as it was defined mid-century, and so a lot of good evidence is elided. Oh, and being a mid-century book, don't expect quantitative evidence of any kind. But it's an interesting enough theoretical framework, and should be more widely read.
April 11, 2025
He alucinado con muchas páginas, pero diría que al final se me ha hecho largo. En todo caso, es un librazo.
February 21, 2015
My, my ... simply the best book I have read in ... oh, I don't know, two or three months, but I try to read a lot of good books ... anyhow, this is a peach and a must read. The interesting point for me is reflecting on how other reviewers, here and elsewhere, have felt it necessary to suggest that Mumford's insights are "dated". Not at all! The most compelling suggestion that he makes, for me, is that, in fact, we can trace the beginnings of our love affair not just with machines and gadgets but with the cultural milieu that creates such a receptive space for their interventions right back to the C14th. The scientistic wetdream of reducing all things to their 'component parts' begins there - and the drive towards "objectivity" has its roots in the success of the materialized worldview that resulted from that vision: all the stuff that was so clearly effective and powerful and, in that respect, inarguable. This is the ideological turn that sets us on the road to the here and now - and our largely uncritical acceptance of machines and machinery that might, indeed, get shit done, but only at the expense of those who service and administer them, those who share their environment (increasingly, a global one!) and those who live in the shadow of their ruling conceits (i.e. all of us!)
But, and this is essential, as Mumford makes explicitly clear: this scientistic perspective was never 'objective' in the first place - as the 'objective' truth is that there are complex living creatures (and systems) in the world that, once you dismantle or reduce them, cease to live. That necrophiliac tendency of science, so well explored by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, is beautifully explored here by Mumford, in the clearest, most lucid and unsensational terms. In the 1930s. Genius.
But, and this is essential, as Mumford makes explicitly clear: this scientistic perspective was never 'objective' in the first place - as the 'objective' truth is that there are complex living creatures (and systems) in the world that, once you dismantle or reduce them, cease to live. That necrophiliac tendency of science, so well explored by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, is beautifully explored here by Mumford, in the clearest, most lucid and unsensational terms. In the 1930s. Genius.
March 19, 2019
Vacuum pumps driven by electric motors are forced into American households for the purpose of cleaning an obsolete form of floor covering, the carpet or the rug, whose appropriateness for use in interiors, if it did not disappear with the caravans where it originated, certainly passed out of existence with rubber heels and steam-heated houses. To count such pathetic examples of waste to the credit of the machine is like counting the rise in the number of constipation remedies a proof of the benefits of leisure.
Old Man Yells At Cloud: The Book
When he restricts himself to the history of the machine, Mumford isn't bad (though you could do better - I recommend Braudel's Civilization & Capitalism vol. 1). But when he tries to venture beyond that to the broader social implications of the machine the book is a mess of noise and whining. When he tries to talk about economics, sociology, psychology, etc. the level of analysis never rises above that of a stoned dorm-room conversation.
Mumford's attitude at first appears to be a sort of endearing, if slightly silly, humanistic naivete. But by the end of the book it devolves into advocacy for a totalitarian communist "utopia" in which everything is "normalized", intermingled with praise for Stalinism. Naturally all his predictions for the future turned out to be hilariously wrong: "capitalism itself will be eliminated by internal rot", "We are now entering a phase of dissociation between capitalism and technics", etc.
I'd say it's mainly interesting as a historical artifact of interbellum thought rather than a history in its own right.
If you have to read it, the first 4-5 chapters are not so bad. The crap is mostly concentrated toward the end.
August 26, 2020
这是本接近一百年历史的书——作者没有经历过二次世界大战，更没有预见到我们正在经历着的第三次工业革命，aka 信息革命。在我们这个时代，海量信息以光速浸润世界的每一个以光缆相连的角落；作者路易斯·芒福德（Lewis Mumford）的时代（1934年），信息透过无线电报，以不足位元每秒的速率流动。从这个角度来说，这部书毫无疑问是陈旧而过时的。
但若想要了解以工厂/机械为中心的的工业革命是如何发生的，以及当时的人们又是如何看待他们遇到的这一次重大社会变革的话，这本书是再详细不过的了。
它介绍了科技与社会相伴演化的过程，解答了技术产生的渊源。技术从来不是孤立的，每一个技术的时代都有促使之发展的背景，也就是作者所说，没有技术是“毫无根据地来势汹汹而又改变了一切的”。早在蒸汽机被广泛商用之前，它的低效率的原型机（甚至有些是木质的）就已经被发明在册。
同样的，技术的使能者——各种职业的人们——就像技术的发展一样，也在随着社会对技术的不同需求而演进。尽管许多职业，譬如军队的“工兵”，在创建之时实属空前，但透过他们工作的本质，我们仍然有办法一窥其始源。
以硅谷和德州仪器为首的集成电路行业尚未成气候，因此不在书中讨论范围内。不过书中最重要的概念，并非史诗，而是对人类技术与社会（或者说人类本身）发展的范式的思考。尽管技术在变化，人类文明的规律却不会改变。
最后，我摘抄一段话，印证不过时的人类文明现状：
但若想要了解以工厂/机械为中心的的工业革命是如何发生的，以及当时的人们又是如何看待他们遇到的这一次重大社会变革的话，这本书是再详细不过的了。
它介绍了科技与社会相伴演化的过程，解答了技术产生的渊源。技术从来不是孤立的，每一个技术的时代都有促使之发展的背景，也就是作者所说，没有技术是“毫无根据地来势汹汹而又改变了一切的”。早在蒸汽机被广泛商用之前，它的低效率的原型机（甚至有些是木质的）就已经被发明在册。
同样的，技术的使能者——各种职业的人们——就像技术的发展一样，也在随着社会对技术的不同需求而演进。尽管许多职业，譬如军队的“工兵”，在创建之时实属空前，但透过他们工作的本质，我们仍然有办法一窥其始源。
以硅谷和德州仪器为首的集成电路行业尚未成气候，因此不在书中讨论范围内。不过书中最重要的概念，并非史诗，而是对人类技术与社会（或者说人类本身）发展的范式的思考。尽管技术在变化，人类文明的规律却不会改变。
最后，我摘抄一段话，印证不过时的人类文明现状：
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2013
A classic study of the entanglement of technology and society. Dated, of course, but Mumford's text is still provocative for those of us thinking about the intersections of culture and new technologies today. A must-read for anyone working in tech or on tech.
July 13, 2017
the last chapter is obviously outdated, but the main (historical) part of the book is absolutely outstanding
December 15, 2018
First of all, this is a very good book, thought provoking and very broad and thorough in its approach. It's not perfect, I will outline below why, but nevertheless I recommend it very much.
First of all, I had to double check a couple of times if this book was really written in 1934. It speaks about our modern ills like traffic congestion, role of anti conception and sex, military-industrial complex, basic income, ... and you wouldn't notice it. This book could very well have been written yesterday. This shows two things: the problems and challenges of our current times are not new, and have been going on for a while but we aren't solving them, and also these problems might not merit a panic and urgency that is sometimes called for. I very much prefer this book with its rational approach. There are only a couple of minor points that are outdated (e.g. asbestos promotion). And of course, you know the book is from the antebellum because the speaks of "The World War" ...
The book is very good in retracing the origins of machine, technology and capitalism over the centuries. From the clock and the sounding of bells for monasteries to coal and steel industries, humans have lost touch with what is more spontaneous or organic, and there has been an external framework imposed on them that is less human. He does this with a Foucaultian genealogy, but he of course predates that famous French philosopher. Again, the book could have been written now and would be labelled as written by a pupil of Foucault. On the other hand, Mumford states and asserts a lot, but does not support it well with written sources (obscure or not, cfr Foucault). At times that really hinders the reading and appreciation of the arguments. The word use (complex!) and referencing sometimes things that we may no longer know do not help either.
Apart from Foucault, you should also take into account he is writing in the same period as Heidegger, and he shares some lines of thinking, e.g. tools/utensils that help humans versus independent machines that drive human behaviour. I do not know if Mumford was aware of Heideggerian thinking, we can stalk it up if needed to a more generic line of thinking about being and technology that started in that era.
From the geotechnic to the paleotechnic (coal and steel) to the neotechnic, Mumford hopes for a biotechnic future, where machine is integrated but subservient to human enterprise. He is completely mistaken, but that is not an issue. He lived before the advent of computers, AI and big data, and if he would write the book now, he could make the argument that we are still in the paleotechnic, where the machine still manages our human lives, making us even slaves to small handheld devices. The glimmer of hope he saw, seems in retrospect only like a glitch.
It also, and that is my main issue with the book, makes a couple of thought errors in the final chapter that outlines possible solutions. I have no problems with his Marxian approach (although at times very critical of Marx because that is for him an outdated paleotechnic thinking). I also think that his reasoning of bringing the production of energy under public control merits a lot of attention, especially in his arguments that increasing too much the available energy does not help us solving issues better, it just creates more stuff that we need to buy. But the continuation of this argument into a planned and communist approach of economy has been shown to be utterly wrong by later years and by the horribleness of the communist regimes that were in place. Don't get me wrong, I do think that the neoliberal policies since the nineties aren't necessarily better, and that counting on the profit motive to solve our problems will not help either. But instituting a centralised planning will only install more bureaucracy and lack of incentives to solve our problems. A green revolution for me will only work if there is also a profit. For that, the correct price, taking into account the depletion and destruction of natural ressources (a point Mumford also talks about) must be part of the cost side, and some things might have to be limited to avoid excesses and in order to focus. Again Mumford is worth the reading, but bring a bag of salt for the last chapter.
In conclusion: wauw, historical and philosophical analysis that still hit very close to home... I liked it.
First of all, I had to double check a couple of times if this book was really written in 1934. It speaks about our modern ills like traffic congestion, role of anti conception and sex, military-industrial complex, basic income, ... and you wouldn't notice it. This book could very well have been written yesterday. This shows two things: the problems and challenges of our current times are not new, and have been going on for a while but we aren't solving them, and also these problems might not merit a panic and urgency that is sometimes called for. I very much prefer this book with its rational approach. There are only a couple of minor points that are outdated (e.g. asbestos promotion). And of course, you know the book is from the antebellum because the speaks of "The World War" ...
The book is very good in retracing the origins of machine, technology and capitalism over the centuries. From the clock and the sounding of bells for monasteries to coal and steel industries, humans have lost touch with what is more spontaneous or organic, and there has been an external framework imposed on them that is less human. He does this with a Foucaultian genealogy, but he of course predates that famous French philosopher. Again, the book could have been written now and would be labelled as written by a pupil of Foucault. On the other hand, Mumford states and asserts a lot, but does not support it well with written sources (obscure or not, cfr Foucault). At times that really hinders the reading and appreciation of the arguments. The word use (complex!) and referencing sometimes things that we may no longer know do not help either.
Apart from Foucault, you should also take into account he is writing in the same period as Heidegger, and he shares some lines of thinking, e.g. tools/utensils that help humans versus independent machines that drive human behaviour. I do not know if Mumford was aware of Heideggerian thinking, we can stalk it up if needed to a more generic line of thinking about being and technology that started in that era.
From the geotechnic to the paleotechnic (coal and steel) to the neotechnic, Mumford hopes for a biotechnic future, where machine is integrated but subservient to human enterprise. He is completely mistaken, but that is not an issue. He lived before the advent of computers, AI and big data, and if he would write the book now, he could make the argument that we are still in the paleotechnic, where the machine still manages our human lives, making us even slaves to small handheld devices. The glimmer of hope he saw, seems in retrospect only like a glitch.
It also, and that is my main issue with the book, makes a couple of thought errors in the final chapter that outlines possible solutions. I have no problems with his Marxian approach (although at times very critical of Marx because that is for him an outdated paleotechnic thinking). I also think that his reasoning of bringing the production of energy under public control merits a lot of attention, especially in his arguments that increasing too much the available energy does not help us solving issues better, it just creates more stuff that we need to buy. But the continuation of this argument into a planned and communist approach of economy has been shown to be utterly wrong by later years and by the horribleness of the communist regimes that were in place. Don't get me wrong, I do think that the neoliberal policies since the nineties aren't necessarily better, and that counting on the profit motive to solve our problems will not help either. But instituting a centralised planning will only install more bureaucracy and lack of incentives to solve our problems. A green revolution for me will only work if there is also a profit. For that, the correct price, taking into account the depletion and destruction of natural ressources (a point Mumford also talks about) must be part of the cost side, and some things might have to be limited to avoid excesses and in order to focus. Again Mumford is worth the reading, but bring a bag of salt for the last chapter.
In conclusion: wauw, historical and philosophical analysis that still hit very close to home... I liked it.
August 31, 2014
The Neotechnic Phase
A. The Beginnings of Neotechnics
1. Began with the water-turbine of Fourneyron, Faraday’s work on the electro-magnet (1800-50)
2. This led to the phone, radio, TV, in the 20th
B. The importance of science
1. Two important facts for this phase; the scientific method
2. The application of science to technics and the conduct of life
C. New sources of energy
1. This phase was designated by electricity
2. Eotechnic: water & wind
3. Paleotechnic: coal and steam
D. The displacement of the proletariat
1. The electric motor transformed the plant
2. The worker needed to be alert and intelligent, an all around mechanic instead of a specialized hand
3. Thus this phase saw an increase in the number of trained technicians and a decrease in the number of human robots
E. Neotechnic materials
1. New alloys with a high degree of conductivity
2. The chemical utilization of coal
F. Power and mobility
1. The development of the internal combustion engine
2. The Otto in 1876
G. The paradox of communication
1. Radio, TV, telephone
2. The paradox is that with the convenience of instantaneous communication we will ignore the reflective thoughts of writing and reading
H. The new permanent record
1. Camera, photograph, film
2. These serve as an extension of collective memory
I. Light and life
1. The telescope and microscope assume a new importance here
2. The spectroscope and x-ray utilize light as an important tool of exploration
J. The influence of biology
1. The belief in mechanical flight grew out of the physiological laboratory (the Wright bros?)
2. The moving picture could help study organic life
K. From destruction to conservation
1. Paleotechnic period was noted for its waste of resources
2. Neotechnic phase began to conserve materials
3. Forest destruction
L. The planning of population
1. The planning of human regions is the most important neotechnic innovations
2. Contraception is very important (baby-boom is a drastic increase)
3. A divorce between sexual and paternal functions
4. It stabilized the institution of marriage (no way)
M. The present psuedomorph
1. New discoveries have been placed inside existing structures
2. Electricity and gasoline have increased the congestion of what originally began with coal and steam
III. Compensations and Reversions
A. Characteristics of the machine civilization (summary of this chapter)
1. Regularization of time, contraction of time and space, standardization of performance, transfer of skill to the automata, increase of collective interdependence [281]
B. Summary of social reactions
1. The sum total of the 3 phases constitutes our present condition
C. The mechanical routine
1. The first characteristic of modern machine civilization is temporal regularity; the clock
2. Sexual intimacy is relegated to the fatigued hours of the day adds it the efficiency of working life with a sacrifice in organic relations
D. Purposeless materialism; Superfluous power
1. There is a disproportionate emphasis on the material side of life
E. Co-operation v. Slavery
1. The safety razor has transformed the operation from a hazardous one to one in which even the most inept male can perform
2. The machine is ambivalent; it is an instrument of liberation and repression
F. Direct attack on the machine
1. This was an unmatched struggle because the military and gov. were on the side of those who exploited the machine
G. Romantic and utilitarian
1. The utilitarian was at one with the machine
2. Romanticism was an attempt to restore human life to the way it was
3. The romantic reaction took 3 forms
a) Nationalism and the past: A revival of regionalism
b) Nature: the cultivation of nature for its own sake and the pursuit of rural modes of living
c) Primitive: return to a simpler time of the primitive
H. Sport and the “bitch-goddess”
1. The romantic movements were important correctives to what the machine left out
2. Mass-sports is also a compensatory function
3. Sports presents 3 elements: spectacle, competition, the personalities of the gladiators
4. Yet, sports have failed because of its seeking nationalistic exploit
5. This has turned out to be one of the least effective reactions against the machine
I. The cult of death
1. Only war has been less effective than sport
2. War is the supreme drama of a mechanized society
J. Resistance and adjustment
1. We must abandon our futile attempts to resist the machine
2. Also the advocates of the machine must recognize the validity of the romantic movement
3. The romantic and the utilitarian must come together
* Assimilation of the Machine
* New Cultural Values
* The new semi-automatic machines seem to have a reality and independent existence apart from the user
* The objects of the machines were assimilation and not the spirit of the machine itself
* The practical results may by admirable or dubious; but the method that underlies them has a permanent importance to the race
* The machine has added a whole new series of arts, it has disclosed new esthetic spectacles
* The machine is a human product and helps enlarge the provinces of culture itself .
* This chapter looks at the machine as an instrument of culture and ways in which we have tried to assimilate it
* The Neutrality of Order
* Before the machine order was controlled by gods and monarchs
* Science created the possibility of finding order in nature
* Science contributed through inventions and mechanization a new order for the environment
* The second contribution of science was a limiting one; it destroyed the mythologies of Greek gods and Christian heroes
* At the same time as the intellectual assimilation of the machine came the esthetic and emotional apprehension of the new environment
* The Esthetic Experience of the Machine
* At the moment when praise of industrialism was the loudest, the machine began to be regarded as inherently ugly
* The Cubists were the first school to overcome this
* In this perception of the machine as a source of art, the new painters and sculptors delivered art from the romantic prejudice against the machine
* Photography as Means and Symbol
* The history of the camera and the photograph illustrate dilemmas that have arisen in the development of the machine process and its application to objects of esthetic value
* As the technical problems of the camera were solved, the photographer became more consciousness of the esthetic arrangements around him
* The motion picture was degraded a little by its commercial development and its attempt to make it the vehicle of story telling
* In industry the machine will replace the human, in the arts the machine will deepen his intuition
* The Growth of Functionalism
* The first stage of machine design products of the machine was the machine. The machine was the direct expression of its own function.
* The second stage of machine production was a compromise. One was to be designed for machine efficiency and the other was to be defined for looks
* The third stage the imagination is infused into the machine at every stage of development (the mind works through the medium of the machine) CAD
* Principle of economy: the removal of every part of the machine that is not absolutely necessary
* The Simplification of the Environment
* As an instrument the machine has complicated the environment
* Thus, to reduce constant stimuli, the environment must be kept as simple as possible
* This is the importance of the simplification
* The Objective Personality
* What sort of man comes out of modern technics
* In the 10th century man was subjectively formed, today mans objectively formed
* Objective in the sense that we are formed by the experience of machines
* We need to further assimilate the machine to be able to go beyond it into the realm of the organic
A. The Beginnings of Neotechnics
1. Began with the water-turbine of Fourneyron, Faraday’s work on the electro-magnet (1800-50)
2. This led to the phone, radio, TV, in the 20th
B. The importance of science
1. Two important facts for this phase; the scientific method
2. The application of science to technics and the conduct of life
C. New sources of energy
1. This phase was designated by electricity
2. Eotechnic: water & wind
3. Paleotechnic: coal and steam
D. The displacement of the proletariat
1. The electric motor transformed the plant
2. The worker needed to be alert and intelligent, an all around mechanic instead of a specialized hand
3. Thus this phase saw an increase in the number of trained technicians and a decrease in the number of human robots
E. Neotechnic materials
1. New alloys with a high degree of conductivity
2. The chemical utilization of coal
F. Power and mobility
1. The development of the internal combustion engine
2. The Otto in 1876
G. The paradox of communication
1. Radio, TV, telephone
2. The paradox is that with the convenience of instantaneous communication we will ignore the reflective thoughts of writing and reading
H. The new permanent record
1. Camera, photograph, film
2. These serve as an extension of collective memory
I. Light and life
1. The telescope and microscope assume a new importance here
2. The spectroscope and x-ray utilize light as an important tool of exploration
J. The influence of biology
1. The belief in mechanical flight grew out of the physiological laboratory (the Wright bros?)
2. The moving picture could help study organic life
K. From destruction to conservation
1. Paleotechnic period was noted for its waste of resources
2. Neotechnic phase began to conserve materials
3. Forest destruction
L. The planning of population
1. The planning of human regions is the most important neotechnic innovations
2. Contraception is very important (baby-boom is a drastic increase)
3. A divorce between sexual and paternal functions
4. It stabilized the institution of marriage (no way)
M. The present psuedomorph
1. New discoveries have been placed inside existing structures
2. Electricity and gasoline have increased the congestion of what originally began with coal and steam
III. Compensations and Reversions
A. Characteristics of the machine civilization (summary of this chapter)
1. Regularization of time, contraction of time and space, standardization of performance, transfer of skill to the automata, increase of collective interdependence [281]
B. Summary of social reactions
1. The sum total of the 3 phases constitutes our present condition
C. The mechanical routine
1. The first characteristic of modern machine civilization is temporal regularity; the clock
2. Sexual intimacy is relegated to the fatigued hours of the day adds it the efficiency of working life with a sacrifice in organic relations
D. Purposeless materialism; Superfluous power
1. There is a disproportionate emphasis on the material side of life
E. Co-operation v. Slavery
1. The safety razor has transformed the operation from a hazardous one to one in which even the most inept male can perform
2. The machine is ambivalent; it is an instrument of liberation and repression
F. Direct attack on the machine
1. This was an unmatched struggle because the military and gov. were on the side of those who exploited the machine
G. Romantic and utilitarian
1. The utilitarian was at one with the machine
2. Romanticism was an attempt to restore human life to the way it was
3. The romantic reaction took 3 forms
a) Nationalism and the past: A revival of regionalism
b) Nature: the cultivation of nature for its own sake and the pursuit of rural modes of living
c) Primitive: return to a simpler time of the primitive
H. Sport and the “bitch-goddess”
1. The romantic movements were important correctives to what the machine left out
2. Mass-sports is also a compensatory function
3. Sports presents 3 elements: spectacle, competition, the personalities of the gladiators
4. Yet, sports have failed because of its seeking nationalistic exploit
5. This has turned out to be one of the least effective reactions against the machine
I. The cult of death
1. Only war has been less effective than sport
2. War is the supreme drama of a mechanized society
J. Resistance and adjustment
1. We must abandon our futile attempts to resist the machine
2. Also the advocates of the machine must recognize the validity of the romantic movement
3. The romantic and the utilitarian must come together
* Assimilation of the Machine
* New Cultural Values
* The new semi-automatic machines seem to have a reality and independent existence apart from the user
* The objects of the machines were assimilation and not the spirit of the machine itself
* The practical results may by admirable or dubious; but the method that underlies them has a permanent importance to the race
* The machine has added a whole new series of arts, it has disclosed new esthetic spectacles
* The machine is a human product and helps enlarge the provinces of culture itself .
* This chapter looks at the machine as an instrument of culture and ways in which we have tried to assimilate it
* The Neutrality of Order
* Before the machine order was controlled by gods and monarchs
* Science created the possibility of finding order in nature
* Science contributed through inventions and mechanization a new order for the environment
* The second contribution of science was a limiting one; it destroyed the mythologies of Greek gods and Christian heroes
* At the same time as the intellectual assimilation of the machine came the esthetic and emotional apprehension of the new environment
* The Esthetic Experience of the Machine
* At the moment when praise of industrialism was the loudest, the machine began to be regarded as inherently ugly
* The Cubists were the first school to overcome this
* In this perception of the machine as a source of art, the new painters and sculptors delivered art from the romantic prejudice against the machine
* Photography as Means and Symbol
* The history of the camera and the photograph illustrate dilemmas that have arisen in the development of the machine process and its application to objects of esthetic value
* As the technical problems of the camera were solved, the photographer became more consciousness of the esthetic arrangements around him
* The motion picture was degraded a little by its commercial development and its attempt to make it the vehicle of story telling
* In industry the machine will replace the human, in the arts the machine will deepen his intuition
* The Growth of Functionalism
* The first stage of machine design products of the machine was the machine. The machine was the direct expression of its own function.
* The second stage of machine production was a compromise. One was to be designed for machine efficiency and the other was to be defined for looks
* The third stage the imagination is infused into the machine at every stage of development (the mind works through the medium of the machine) CAD
* Principle of economy: the removal of every part of the machine that is not absolutely necessary
* The Simplification of the Environment
* As an instrument the machine has complicated the environment
* Thus, to reduce constant stimuli, the environment must be kept as simple as possible
* This is the importance of the simplification
* The Objective Personality
* What sort of man comes out of modern technics
* In the 10th century man was subjectively formed, today mans objectively formed
* Objective in the sense that we are formed by the experience of machines
* We need to further assimilate the machine to be able to go beyond it into the realm of the organic
May 16, 2021
Bueno, breve resumen de lo bueno y lo menos bueno de este libro. Empiezo por lo segundo porque siempre es más divertido:
Tremendo esfuerzo que me ha costado terminarlo, lo admito, sobre todo por la cantidad de descripciones técnicas que no me importaban lo más mínimo, y de otras tantas divagaciones capitalismo vs comunismo, que al principio sí, me interesaban para entender el contexto socio-cultural, pero luego me acababa hartando cuando se volvía una constante (que me llegué a sentir mal por no estar escuchando de fondo La Internacional, caramba)
Ahora, ¿qué detalles me gustaron?:
Una de las cosas que más satisfacción me produce cuando leo un libro de no ficción, es que de alguna forma confirme teorías preconcebidas (algo que le gusta mucho a todo el mundo, de hecho), y en este caso, me agradó enormemente que Mumford también considerara tremenda patraña el atribuirle las invenciones (máquinas, instrumentos, sistemas para trabajar la tierra, y un largo etcétera) a una sola mente pensante. En todos los países y en todos los siglos se han querido colocar laureles por invenciones que ya llevaban más tiempo en la tierra que las bacterias, cosa que vienen a demostrar que en casi todas las épocas, sus contemporáneos han creído ser los descubridores o inventores genuinos de algo, y parafraseando a Mumford, "el atribuir un invento a una sola persona constituye una manera de hablar, una falsedad convenientemente alentada por un falso sentido del patriotismo y por el sistema de monopolios de patentes, sistema que permite a un hombre reclamar una recompensa financiera especial por ser el último eslabón en el complicado proceso social que produjo el invento". Dicho de otra manera, en el mundo de la invención, el que llega el último es el que se lleva el premio, por paradójico que resulte. Por supuesto, hay muchos más aspectos de gran interés a lo largo del libro en relación a la implantación de la máquina en nuestras vidas, como su estrecha relación con la guerra, o el reloj como "monstruo" controlador de la vida y tiempo de las personas (ríete de los móviles)
En resumen, es un libro que seguramente le encante a cualquier persona interesada en el origen de la máquina y su posterior desarrollo hasta el siglo XX en los aspectos sociales, económicos y culturales, y que quiera descubrir además qué perspectiva manejaban aquellos humanos de siglos pasados respecto a la tecnología puntera de aquella época (mini spoiler: no hemos cambiado tanto). Ahora, si eres alguien que defiende a ultranza el capital, pues... bueno, puedes probar a leerlo igualmente, a lo mejor te gusta
Tremendo esfuerzo que me ha costado terminarlo, lo admito, sobre todo por la cantidad de descripciones técnicas que no me importaban lo más mínimo, y de otras tantas divagaciones capitalismo vs comunismo, que al principio sí, me interesaban para entender el contexto socio-cultural, pero luego me acababa hartando cuando se volvía una constante (que me llegué a sentir mal por no estar escuchando de fondo La Internacional, caramba)
Ahora, ¿qué detalles me gustaron?:
Una de las cosas que más satisfacción me produce cuando leo un libro de no ficción, es que de alguna forma confirme teorías preconcebidas (algo que le gusta mucho a todo el mundo, de hecho), y en este caso, me agradó enormemente que Mumford también considerara tremenda patraña el atribuirle las invenciones (máquinas, instrumentos, sistemas para trabajar la tierra, y un largo etcétera) a una sola mente pensante. En todos los países y en todos los siglos se han querido colocar laureles por invenciones que ya llevaban más tiempo en la tierra que las bacterias, cosa que vienen a demostrar que en casi todas las épocas, sus contemporáneos han creído ser los descubridores o inventores genuinos de algo, y parafraseando a Mumford, "el atribuir un invento a una sola persona constituye una manera de hablar, una falsedad convenientemente alentada por un falso sentido del patriotismo y por el sistema de monopolios de patentes, sistema que permite a un hombre reclamar una recompensa financiera especial por ser el último eslabón en el complicado proceso social que produjo el invento". Dicho de otra manera, en el mundo de la invención, el que llega el último es el que se lleva el premio, por paradójico que resulte. Por supuesto, hay muchos más aspectos de gran interés a lo largo del libro en relación a la implantación de la máquina en nuestras vidas, como su estrecha relación con la guerra, o el reloj como "monstruo" controlador de la vida y tiempo de las personas (ríete de los móviles)
En resumen, es un libro que seguramente le encante a cualquier persona interesada en el origen de la máquina y su posterior desarrollo hasta el siglo XX en los aspectos sociales, económicos y culturales, y que quiera descubrir además qué perspectiva manejaban aquellos humanos de siglos pasados respecto a la tecnología puntera de aquella época (mini spoiler: no hemos cambiado tanto). Ahora, si eres alguien que defiende a ultranza el capital, pues... bueno, puedes probar a leerlo igualmente, a lo mejor te gusta
January 17, 2022
"The alternative to basic communism is the toleration of chaos"
Easy to understand why this is a classic. His tri-epochal breakdown of the history of technology is impressive enough in its scope and depth, but it's the no-nonsense political implications at the end that really leave a lasting impression (even if his ideas of "equilibrium" end up falling into dangerous cyberneticisms). Some choice quotes (from 1934!!!!!!!!!!):
"War is the most disastrous outlet for the repressed impulses of society that has been devised" p. 310
"A society that has lost its life values will tend to make a religion of death and build up a cult around its worship--a religion not less grateful because it satisfies the mounting number of paranoiacs and sadists such a disrupted society necessarily produces." p. 311
"The energy, the technical knowledge, the social heritage of a community belongs equally
to every member of it, since in the large the individual contributions
and differences are completely insignificant." p. 403
"Careful engineers have figured that the entire amount of work of the existing community could be carried on with less than twenty hours work per week for every existing worker: with complete
rationalization all along the line, and with the elimination of duplications and parasitisms, probably less than twenty hours would suffice to produce a far greater quantity of goods than is produced at present." p. 405
"Fascism has effaced the workers' attempts to overwhelm the capitalist system in Italy and Germany because ultimately the workers had no plan for carrying the fight beyond the stage of fighting." p. 419
Easy to understand why this is a classic. His tri-epochal breakdown of the history of technology is impressive enough in its scope and depth, but it's the no-nonsense political implications at the end that really leave a lasting impression (even if his ideas of "equilibrium" end up falling into dangerous cyberneticisms). Some choice quotes (from 1934!!!!!!!!!!):
"War is the most disastrous outlet for the repressed impulses of society that has been devised" p. 310
"A society that has lost its life values will tend to make a religion of death and build up a cult around its worship--a religion not less grateful because it satisfies the mounting number of paranoiacs and sadists such a disrupted society necessarily produces." p. 311
"The energy, the technical knowledge, the social heritage of a community belongs equally
to every member of it, since in the large the individual contributions
and differences are completely insignificant." p. 403
"Careful engineers have figured that the entire amount of work of the existing community could be carried on with less than twenty hours work per week for every existing worker: with complete
rationalization all along the line, and with the elimination of duplications and parasitisms, probably less than twenty hours would suffice to produce a far greater quantity of goods than is produced at present." p. 405
"Fascism has effaced the workers' attempts to overwhelm the capitalist system in Italy and Germany because ultimately the workers had no plan for carrying the fight beyond the stage of fighting." p. 419
May 5, 2020
Mumford's writing is active and lucid in this landmark volume, and he brings a measure of insight and engagement to the topic of the machine and society that few even contemporary theorists can bring. At the core of Mumford's concern is the place of man in civilization and with regard to technology, and he does a remarkable job tracing the intermingling of these relations across time and through various physical and psychological manifestations. That the book ends with a scathing take on capitalism and an advocacy for a collective understanding of the economy and society is fascinating in showing that sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same in terms of politics and arguments. But Mumford does an admirable job here navigating through the complexities of history and his commitment to human life in order to support his thesis, which he draws throughout plenty of interesting and applicable examples. Good read, and surprisingly modern in its tone and inclinations.
April 21, 2022
The left has seen many critiques of political economy from Marxists and political power from anarchists, but here Lewis Mumford offers a powerful critique of technics. Technics include technology, but imply more of a praxis than any artifact. Technics are essentially a kind of know-how, which can remain even when the actual artifacts of technology are destroyed. Mumford shows how technics can have either a liberatory or authoritarian character, and describes how authoritarian technics have come to take over. Where a great deal of discourse about technology has been either techno-utopian or primitivist, Mumford offers a sense of how we can more critically evaluate technology and direct it toward more liberatory ends. In the final section, he discusses his vision of "basic communism," through which we can create a more liberatory society.
May 14, 2025
Arguably Mumford's most famous book, "Technics and Civilization," is really two books. The first half of the book is historical, outlining the developments of technology and machinery. Mumford interestingly concludes that the rise of the machines was supported by the mechanization of humanity. The second half of the book is more theoretical, discussing the implications of civilization's relationship with the machine. As Marx says, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Mumford clearly takes this to heart, depicting the path forward to a more humane and organic form of life as a basic form of communism and an increase in the political imagination.
A worthwhile read despite the rapid developments which continued in technics in the close to 100 years since first published.
A worthwhile read despite the rapid developments which continued in technics in the close to 100 years since first published.
December 13, 2017
Written in 1934, this is a great (though not complete) review of technological progress up to that point. It's a little bit fatalistic in its last couple of chapters, which is sort of ironic given the rest of the book concludes that the fear of automation replacing humans throughout time was warrantless as people are generally not imaginative enough to believe next period's great new technology will mean things, on the whole, will be alright. Indeed if you replace the word "machine" with "AI/robots" in many areas, you get a funny feeling, the author lives with us today!
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