Characteristics of Modern Technique (2)

April 20, 2010 by kris de decker Filed Under: Lewis Mumford, Quotes, Technology

“The great feat of medieval technics was that it was able to promote and absorb many important changes without losing the immense carryover of inventions and skills from earlier cultures. In this lies one of its vital points of superiority over the modern mode of monotechnics, which boasts of effacing, as fast and as far as possible, the technical achievements of earlier periods, even though the result, as in the case of monotransport by motor car or jet plane alone, may be far less flexible and less efficient than the more diverse and many-paced system which preceded it.”

Quoted from “Pentagon Of Power: The Myth Of The Machine, Vol. II“, Lewis Mumford, 1970.

Characteristics of modern technique (1).
Characteristics of modern technique (3).

Has There Been Progress Since 1250?

April 9, 2010 by kris de decker Filed Under: Lewis Mumford, Quotes, Work

“Even in backward mining communities, as late as the sixteenth century more than half the recorded days were holidays; while for Europe as a whole, the total number of holidays, including Sunday, came to 189, a number even greater than those enjoyed by Imperial Rome. Nothing more clearly indicates a surplus of food and human energy, if not material goods. Modern labor-saving devices have as yet done no better.”

Quoted from “Myth of the Machine : Technics and Human Development“, Lewis Mumford, 1967.