Simple Math, 2005.
 Simple Math, 2005.
“In
the past, the man has been first. In the future the system must be first.” -Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific
Management, 1911, page ii."During the first seven centuries of the machine's existence the categories of time and space underwent an extraordinary change, and no aspect of life was left untouched by this transformation. The application of quantitative methods of thought to the study of nature had its first manifestation in the regular measurement of time; ...for the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men...The clock, not the steam engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age." -Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1939, page 12-14. "Machines set the pace at which men, women, and chidren labored. Time became a commodity that could be 'saved', 'spent', or 'wasted'...Work time and leisure time were clearly demarcated, and there emerged an industrial work ethic that stressed time thrift, human subordination to machine rather than natural or personal rhythms, and productivity rather than individual skills or expression. In the nineteenth century the impact of the factory system on temporal perception was extended by the mass production of clocks and watches, which made possible their widespread purchase by the lower middle classes and the better paid elements of the working classes...The new secular and mechanized time sense became a dominant feature of day-to-day life throughout much of western Europe and parts of North America." -Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men, 1989, page 242. “The faith of progress itself - especially the idea of progress as built into the evolutionary scheme of things - is in every way the psychological equivalent of religion.” -W. Warren Wagar, H.G. Wells and the World State, 1961, page 106. "There are those who hope that the good of a better understanding of man and society which is offered by this new field of work (Cybernetics) may anticipate and outweigh the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in the hands of the most unscrupulous.) I write in 1947, and I am compelled to say that it is a very slight hope." -Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1961, page 29. “Cybernetics was not, contrary to the usual, mistaken view, concerned with making the machine human—it was concerned with mechanizing the human.” -Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The
Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science, 2000, page 51.
“Technical responsibility differs from moral responsibility in that it forgets that the action is a means to something other than itself.” -Zymunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 2000, page 101. “Compartmentalization of knowledge, to me, was
the very heart of security. My rule was simple and not capable of
misinterpretation- each man should know everything he needed to know to do his
job and nothing else.” -General Leslie R. Groves,
Army Corps of Engineers, in charge of the Manhattan Project, quoted in
Nukespeak: the Selling of Nuclear Technology in America, 1983, page 26.“Compartmentalization is the principal mechanism of evil.” -M. Scott Peck, quoted in What We Leave Behind, Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, 2009, page 81.
"What would now be called science was an integral part of the new machine system from the beginning. This orderly knowledge, which was based on cosmic regularities, flourished, as we have seen, with the cult of the sun: star-watching and calendar-making coincided with and supported the institution of kingship, even though no small part of the efforts of the priests and soothsayers was, in addition, devoted to interpreting the meaning of singular events such as the appearance of comets, eclipses of the sun or moon...To be effective, this kind of knowledge must remain a secret priestly monopoly. If everyone had equal access to the sources of knowledge and to the system of interpretation, no one would believe in their infallibility, since their errors could then not be concealed...Secret knowledge is the key to any system of total control. Until printing was invented, the written word remained largely a class monopoly. Today the language of higher mathematics plus computerism has restored both the secrecy and the monopoly, with a consequent resumption of totalitarian control." -Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, Vol. 1, Technics and Human Development, 1966, page 199. "Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific-technological elite." -Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961. "In the last hundred years or so, 'scientific' views of history have become increasingly popular, for humanity as a statistical whole is thought of as being subject to analysis and prediction. In this thinking, once the motivations of the masses could be measured and tabulated, their response to economic or technological stimuli could be accurately predicted. Appropriate technology and education could then be adapted to engineer and control the desired society. Such theories are popular among both political rightists and leftists, neither of whom realize that they are advocating the same kind of society - a sort of 'scientific totalitarianism' or 'technocratic dictatorship'". -Richard J. Sutcliffe, The Fourth Civilization: Technology, Society, and Ethics "Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity." -William Wordsworth, The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind, an autobiographical poem, 1799-1805. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” -Bhagavad Gita "Savoir pour prévoir et prévoir pour pouvoir" -Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte "All science is merely a means to an end. The means is knowledge. The end is control." -Anonymous, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars: Operations Research Technical Manual, May 1979. “Religion.
Teleology. Control. The desire for prediction, and ultimately the desire to
control the natural world, has become the foundation of their methodology of
knowing truth…The point of science- and this may or may not be true of
individual scientists- is to make the world subject to human domination. If
they can abstract and then they can predict on the basis of that abstraction,
then they can try, at both the human and natural levels, to use that prediction
in order to exert control.” -Stanley Aronowitz,
Professor of Sociology; quoted in Welcome to the Machine, Derrick
Jensen and George Draffan, 2003, page 40."Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?" -John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869. "Cannot you see...that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and the sense of touch; it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops-but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds- but not to our goal. We exist only as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die." -E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909. "My boss informed me that another employee was replacing me. The new employee was far better then me and would never take a day off. The new employee would never fall sick, never ask for overtime pay, and had nothing to do with the union. The new employee would not waste time near the water cooler socializing with other employees and would never waste time on Facebook. The new employee would never get stressed out, or have a nervous breakdown. The new employee would never get tired and will work tirelessly forever. Most importantly, the new employee will never get injured and sue the company for compensation. Meet 1557. The new employee is a robot. This robot just replaced me in the warehouse today." -Sri Raghu, We Are Obsolete!, Faronics Blog, April 4 2012. Be the first to post a comment. | ||||||||||||
