| However far modern science and technology | | | | from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and |
| have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they | | | | nerves, we don´t really have any rights (read |
| have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing | | | | autonomy) left' ". |
| is impossible. | | | | "This latter point might well be taken as a warning |
| Today, the degradation of the inner life is | | | | to disengage ourselves, as soon as possible, from |
| symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred | | | | the power system so menacingly described: for |
| from interruption is the private toilet. | | | | McLuhan it leads, rather, to a demand for |
| By his very success in inventing laboursaving | | | | unconditional surrender. 'Under electric technology', |
| devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss | | | | he observes, 'the entire business of man |
| of boredom that only the privileged classes in | | | | becomes learning and knowing'. Apart from the |
| earlier civilizations have ever fathomed. | | | | fact that this is a pathetically academic picture of |
| For most Americans, progress means accepting | | | | the potentialities of man, the kind of learning and |
| what is new because it is new, and discarding | | | | knowing that McLuhan becomes enraptured over |
| what is old because it is old. | | | | is precisely that which can be programmed on a |
| I would die happy if I knew that on my | | | | computer: 'We are now in position...', he observes, |
| tombstone could be written these words, "This | | | | 'to transfer the entire show to the memory of a |
| man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous | | | | computer'. No better formula could be found for |
| things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to | | | | arresting and ultimately suppressing human |
| pass!" | | | | development..." |
| Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) | | | | Well, this is my opening movement, Your turn, Mr. |
| Dear Sam, | | | | Vaknin. |
| We begin our series on great personalities of the | | | | Dear RCM, |
| 20th century with Lewis Mumford. Of course, this | | | | Good to renew our dialogues. I will get straight to |
| is only an excuse to develop our own ideas. | | | | the point, or, rather, to the points. I intend to deal |
| Those who are interested in the ideas of "our" | | | | with each and every one of them extensively - |
| characters can go to the nearest bookstore and | | | | but, as is our habit, I am just mapping the |
| read directly form the fountain. Anyway, for the | | | | territory. |
| sake of those who are not acquainted with | | | | 1. Is it meaningful to discuss technology separate |
| Mumford, I will draw a brief biography. | | | | from life, as opposed to life, or compared to life? |
| Lewis Mumford was born in 1895 (the same year | | | | Is it not the inevitable product of life, a |
| X-rays were discovered by Roentgen and the | | | | determinant of life and part of its definition? |
| Dreyfus affair was another significant "success"). | | | | Francis Bacon and, centuries later, the visionary |
| Mumford started his career in the US Patent | | | | Ernst Kapp, thought of technology as a means to |
| Office (overseeing "cement and concrete"), which | | | | conquer and master nature - an expression of |
| gave him a first person insight into technological | | | | the classic dichotomy between observer and |
| innovation processes. Later he made contact with | | | | observed. But there could be other ways of |
| his late master Patrick Geddes (and other great | | | | looking at it (consider, for instance, the seminal |
| thinkers like Victor Branford). These encounters | | | | work of Friedrich Dessauer). Kapp was the first |
| converted him into a generalist. His writing career | | | | to talk of technology as "organ projection" |
| extended over six decades in which he made | | | | (preceding McLuhan by more than a century). |
| significant contributions to the literature of history, | | | | Freud wrote in "Civilization and its Discontents": |
| philosophy, art, and architectural criticism. Perhaps | | | | "Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic |
| best known for his work on urban planning and | | | | god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is |
| the study of technology, Mumford was | | | | truly magnificent; but those organs have not |
| co-founder of the Regional Planning Association of | | | | grown on to him and they still give him much |
| America and, for 32 years, wrote the "Sky Line" | | | | trouble at times." |
| column on architecture for the New Yorker. He | | | | 2. On the whole, has technology contributed to |
| served on the faculties of several institutions, | | | | human development or arrested it? |
| including Stanford university, the University of | | | | 3. Even if we accept that technology is alien to |
| Pennsylvania, and MIT, and was appointed to the | | | | life, a foreign implant and a potential menace - |
| New York City Board of Higher Education. He | | | | what frame of reference can accommodate the |
| received many awards, as the National Medal for | | | | new convergence between life and technology |
| Literature and The National Medal for the Arts. | | | | (mainly medical technology and biotechnology)? |
| His first literary work was "The Story of Utopias", | | | | What are cyborgs - life or technology? What |
| which advanced one of the major themes of his | | | | about clones? Artificial implants? Life sustaining |
| life: the utopian (technological) literature and its | | | | devices (like heart-kidney machines)? Future |
| impact on human development. After some other | | | | implants of chips in human brains? Designer babies, |
| minor works (which included a beautiful book on | | | | tailored to specifications by genetic engineering? |
| Herman Melville, 1929), he published his first great | | | | What about ARTIFICIAL intelligence? |
| opus, "Technics and Civilization (1934)", one of the | | | | 4. Is technology IN-human or A-human? In other |
| first historical works on technology. It was even | | | | words, are the main, immutable and dominant |
| incorporated in the curricula of technological | | | | attributes of technology alien to humans, to the |
| institutes, like Cal tech, the first technological | | | | human spirit, or to the human brain? Is this |
| university to have a historical course. This book | | | | possible at all? Is such non-human technology likely |
| was, though with some doubts, technologically | | | | to be developed by artificial intelligence machines |
| oriented. After the war, his point of view, | | | | in the future? Finally, is this kind of technology |
| regarding this as well as other matters, changed | | | | automatically ANTI-human as well? Mumford's |
| somewhat. In 1938 he presented "The Culture of | | | | classification of all technologies to polytechnic |
| Cities", the first work pertaining to the other | | | | (human-friendly) and monotechnic (human averse) |
| leitmotif of his life: urbanism and architecture. In | | | | springs to mind. |
| the forties and fifties, Mumford produced sevearl | | | | 5. Is the impact technology has on the |
| works on the "human condition", sanity, city | | | | INDIVIDUAL necessarily identical or even |
| development and arts. In 1961 appeared another | | | | comparable to the impact it has on human |
| major work of his, "The city in History", a | | | | collectives and societies? Think Internet - the |
| complete survey of the city and its cycles. | | | | answer in this case is clearly NEGATIVE. |
| In the "decisive years", during the sixties, | | | | 6. Is it possible to define what is technology at all? |
| Mumford wrote, in our humble opinion, his major | | | | If we adopt Monsma's definition of technology |
| work: "The Myth of the Machine". It was partly | | | | (1986) as "the systematic treatment of an art" - |
| based on the ideas of Oswald Spengler as refined | | | | is art to be treated as a variant of technology? |
| by Alfred Toynbee, and, distilling nearly sixty | | | | Robert Merton's definition is a non-definition |
| years of investigation, Lewis Mumford brings to a | | | | because it is so broad it encompasses all |
| head his radical revisions of the stale popular | | | | teleological human actions: "any complex of |
| conceptions of human and technological progress. | | | | standardized means for attaining a predetermined |
| "The Myth" is a fully developed historical | | | | result". Jacques Ellul resorted to tautology: "the |
| explanation of the irrationalities that have | | | | totality of methodsrationally arrived at and having |
| undermined the highest achievements of modern | | | | absolute efficiency in every field of human |
| technology - speed, mass production, automation, | | | | activity" (1964). H.D. Lasswell (whose work is |
| instant communication, and remote control. These | | | | mainly media-related) proffered an operative |
| have inevitably brought about pollution, waste, | | | | definition: "the ensemble of practices by which one |
| ecological disruption and human extermination. And | | | | uses available resources to achieve certain valued |
| he makes a comparison - part historical and part | | | | ends". It is clear how unclear and indefensible |
| artistic - between the state machine of the | | | | these definitions are. |
| Pyramid Age and the global cybernetic | | | | 7. The use of technology involves choices and the |
| techno-machine of our "strange days" (the | | | | exercise of free will. Does technology enhance our |
| Pentagon of Power). | | | | ability to exercise free will - or does it detract |
| As the generalist work of Mumford covers | | | | from it? Is there an inherent and insolvable |
| practically all fields of knowledge, I propose to you | | | | contradiction between technology and ethical and |
| to focus our dialogue on the problem of | | | | moral percepts? Put more simply: is technology |
| technology and life (with some linkage to his other | | | | inherently unethical and immoral or a-moral? If so, |
| major field: urbanism). Indeed, this is a hot topic | | | | is it fatalistic, or deterministic, as Thurstein Veblen |
| nowadays (the "mad cow disease" issue). | | | | suggested (in "Engineers and the Price System")? |
| Highlights of this theme are: | | | | To rephrase the question; does technology |
| - Mumford discussion of cybernetics and the | | | | DETERMINE our choices and actions? Does it |
| "automation of automation" (Wiener) | | | | CONSTRAIN our possibilities and LIMIT our |
| - Mumford's polemics with McLuhan and the | | | | potentials? We are all acquainted with utopias (and |
| audio-visual tribe - a humbug, in LM words | | | | dystopias) based on technological advances (just |
| - And especially, his proposal to change the actual | | | | recall the millenarian fervour with which electricity, |
| mega-technology into the life plenitude of organic | | | | the telegraph, railways, the radio, television and |
| polytechnology - anticipating the ecological views | | | | the Internet were greeted). Technology seems to |
| of today. | | | | shape cultures, societies, ideals and expectations. |
| As you are interested in technological media (i.e. | | | | It is an ACTIVE participant in social dynamics. This |
| your essay on the Internet), here is a first strike | | | | is the essence of Mumford's "megamachine", the |
| courtesy Mr. Mumford: | | | | "rigid, hierarchical social organization". Contrast this |
| ".... It is to replace human autonomy in every form | | | | with Dessauer's view of technology as a kind of |
| by an up-to-date electronic model of the | | | | moral and aesthetic statement or doing, a direct |
| megamachine. The mass media, he demonstrates, | | | | way of interacting with things-in-themselves. The |
| are 'put out before they are thought out'. In fact, | | | | latter's views place technology neatly in the |
| 'their being put out tends to cancel the possibility | | | | Kantian framework of categorical imperatives. |
| of their being thought out at all". Precisely. Here | | | | 8. Is technology IN ITSELF neutral? Can the the |
| McLuhan gives the whole show away. Because | | | | undeniable harm caused by technology be caused, |
| every technical apparatus is an extension of | | | | as McLuhan put it, by HUMAN mis-use and abuse: |
| man´s bodily organs, including his brain, this | | | | "[It] is not that there is anything good or bad |
| peripheral structure, by Mcluhan´s analysis, | | | | about [technology] but that unconsciousness of |
| must, by its very mass and ubiquity, replace all | | | | the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a |
| autonomous needs or desires: since now for us | | | | force that we have made ourselves". If so, why |
| 'technology is a part our bodies', no detachment | | | | blame technology and exonerate ourselves? |
| or divorce is possible. 'Once we have surrendered | | | | Displacing the blame is a classic psychological |
| our senses and nervous systems to the private | | | | defence mechanism but it leads to fatal |
| manipulations of those who would try to benefit | | | | behavioural rigidities and pathological thinking. |