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THE MYTH OF THE MACHINE
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SUMMARY
If we define the religious object as that which is uncritically worshipped, it can be said that science and technology are at the heart of a new sacred order.
Realizing, however, that new technologies don't simply add to a culture but fundamentally alter it, media ecology pioneers Neil Postman, Lewis Mumford, and Jacques Ellul insisted that claims of an impending technological utopia may yet be premature.
Postman argued that our culture suffers from a "technological immodesty" that undermines our society's moral foundation. Mumford claimed that we're beholden to a dangerous "technological imperative," while Ellul warned of an unquestioned allegiance to efficiency - "La Technique" - that ultimtely threatens human sovereignty.
The Spectacle, defined by Guy Debord as "the material reconstruction of the religious illusion," shouts Bigger! Better! Faster! More! But while unlimited growth may be the expectation and mantra of modern technology and global capitalism, it's also, as Edward Abbey pointed out, the logic of the cancer cell.
The Myth of the Machine, named after Mumford's thunderous condemnation of technological civilization and incorporating Postman's and Ellul's critiques as well, portrays the result of our accommodation to the demands of technology: a world populated by man-like machines and machine-like men.
WORDS
NARRATION
from Lewis Mumford's
The Myth of the Machine:
Today, we are dominated by an ideology that gives absolute precedence and cosmic authority to the machine.
When an ideology conveys such universal meanings and commands such obedience, it has become, in fact, a religion, and its imperatives have the dynamic force of a myth.
The Myth of the Machine is the unquestioned notion that technological progress and the expansion of power are the chief goals of the human endeavor.
from Neil Postman's
Technopoly:
Now, most people view technology as a staunch friend, because it is a friend: It makes life easier, cleaner, and longer.
Who can ask more of a friend? It is the kind of friend that asks for trust and obedience, which most people are inclined to give because its gifts are truly bountiful.
But there is a dark side to this friend.
Its gifts are not without a heavy cost.
Technology creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.
Technology is thus both friend and enemy.
Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity.
from Eric Goodman:
In the Industrial Age, the machine replaced the limbs of man; in the Information Age, the computer replaces the brain, and we are left to fidget on the sidelines.
Still the promise of fewer working hours has turned into the reality of more.
Listless, bored, tired, afraid and depressed, Spectacle man exerts as much energy avoiding freedom as our ancestors spent securing it. Freed from slavery, we gladly fulfill our servitude as robots.
Technical solutions are applied to the societal problems created by technology, but each "solution" yields a hundred new curses, in response to which new techniques are mechanically applied, thus perpetuating a downward spiral of insanity.
Amidst this downward spiral, life devolves into The Walking Death: that trance-like state in which we attempt to drown our nothingness in a pathological conformity.
Lives are lived at an agonizing remove, degraded by the Spectacle: that second-hand ghost world brought to us by the miracle of electricity.
We are enslaved not by our machines, but by the idea of our machines. And as long as we are, the Spectacle will do anything it must to perpetuate itself.
CREDITS
music and video:
Eric Goodman
words:
Lewis Mumford
Neil Postman
Eric Goodman
based on
Lewis Mumford's
The Myth of the Machine
Neil Postman's
Technopoly
Jacques Ellul's
The Technological Society
Special thanks to the Institute For Regional Education for permission to use clips from the movie
Koyaanisqatsi
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