More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood.
Men now live in conditions that are less than human. Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories, our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning.
Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him to it.
The interval which traditionally separates a scientific discovery and its application in everyday life has been progressively shortened. As soon as a discovery is made, a concrete application is sought. Capital becomes interested, or the state, and the discovery enters the public domain before anyone has had a chance to reckon all the consequences or to recognize its full import.
Human ingenuity and mechanical skill are today being exploited along lines which have little reference to productivity.
