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The Humane Village Journal 1

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Technology

The
Humane Village
Journal 1

 

 

 

 

Culture and Tools


Alessandro Mendini •

All of man's actions have been a progressive falsification of the natural.

 

E.F.Schumacher •

What is at stake is not economics but culture; not the standard of living but the quality of life. Economics and the standard of living can just as well be looked after by a capitalist system, moderated by a bit of planning and redistributive taxation. But culture and generally the quality of life can now only be debased by such a system.

 

Peter Matthiessen •

Dependence on international trade for goods and materials leads inevitably to a monoculture &endash; the same sources and resources for both material and abstract needs, from dress to music &endash; and increasingly, a common language (a pauperized English in most cases) and even a common education and sense of values, with corresponding dismissal and even contempt for the local culture.

 

Erskine Childers •

It is clearly not enough merely to connect everyone with live images of so much suffering and misery. More money may be raised for the outright humanitarian emergencies at the full consequence end of the spectrum, but more understanding of the causes and more concern to tackle them before they are transmuted into intractable and hideous effect does not at all seem to result from our unprecedented transnational communication. And as cause evolves into consequence the cost in human lives and in money inexorably increases. This is morally outrageous and financially stupid, but communication has not yet enabled people to differentiate between
consequence, and root cause.

Neil Postman •

Advertising is a symptom of a world-view that sees tradition as an obstacle to its claims. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of tradition without a measure of respect for symbols. Tradition is, in fact, nothing but the acknowledgment of the authority of symbols and the relevance of the narratives that gave birth to them. With the erosion of symbols there follows a loss of narrative.

 

P.J.Grillo •

Machines rapidly become obsolete because they represent only a small and temporary part of the solution to a problem, and as such they are all a somewhat awkward expression of man's ignorance. The more learned and experienced man becomes, the more new machines he builds to replace the old ones, but no one can ever attain complete replacement, as the perfect machine would annihilate all other machines and render them all useless &endash; and no machine can approximate nature's perfection.

 

Neil Postman •

In automating the operation of political, social, and commercial enterprises, computers may or may not have made them more efficient but they have certainly diverted attention from the question whether or not such enterprises are necessary or how they might be improved.

 

Neil Postman •

The extent of symbol overload and therefore symbol drain is unprecedented in human history. The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unravelling of tradition.

 

Ivan Illich •

We must come to admit that only within limits can machines take the place of slaves; beyond these limits they lead to a new kind of serfdom. Only within limits can education fit people into a man-made environment: beyond these limits lies the universal schoolhouse, hospital ward, or prison. Only within limits ought politics to be concerned with the distribution of maximum industrial outputs, rather than with equal inputs of either energy or information.

Once these limits are recognized, it becomes possible to articulate the triadic relationship between persons, tools, and a new collectivity. Such a society, in which modern technologies serve politically interrelated individuals rather than managers, I will call "convivial."

Peter Matthiessen •

Modern technologies, based on capital and fossil fuels, lead inevitably to centralization and specialization, to cash crops as opposed to subsistence agriculture and barter, to time-wasting travel and stressful town life among strangers. And they are labour saving only in the narrowest sense, since gaining one's livelihood in the new ways, which are competitive rather than communal, demands more time.

 

Neil Postman •

With computers, humans transfer responsibility for an outcome from themselves to a more abstract agent. When this happens, we have relinquished control, which in the case of the computer means that we may, without excessive remorse, pursue ill advised or even inhuman goals because the computer can accomplish them or be imagined to accomplish them. The computer has amplified beyond all reason the metaphor of machines as humans and humans as machines.

 

E.F. Schumacher •

In one way or another everybody will have to take sides in this great conflict. To 'leave it to the experts' means to side with the people of the forward stampede. It is widely accepted that politics is too important a matter to be left to experts. Today, the main content of politics is economics, and the main content of economics is technology. If politics cannot be left to the expert neither can economics and technology.

 

Marshal McLuhan •

Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable.

 

Alexander Neumeister •

The more importance placed on materialistic values and on high technological standards, the more cultural heritage and identity are endangered!

 

Marshal McLuhan •

The medium, or process, of our time &endash; electric technology &endash; is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and reevaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.

 

Lewis Mumford • 

Our elaborate mechanical organization of life has resulted in an increasingly purposeless society, in which some of the parts were neatly articulated and ordered, while the whole made little sense in terms of life-satisfactions and life-fulfilments . In its very mechanical elaboration, our civilization has become emptier because it had not originally been shaped in conformity to the basic needs of human life. Only after the human voice has been transmitted around the world with the speed of light did it become plain that the words so widely disseminated might still be the same words one could hear from the village gossip, or the village idiot, or the village clown...

 

Neil Postman •

Among the implications of these beliefs is a loss of confidence in human judgement and subjectivity. We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation. The computer argues that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and public levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable.

 

Marshal McLuhan •

Technological enlargement is a process toward excess. As part of his spiritual health, man should make as his first object the recognition of pattern as a means to avoid excess and achieve equilibrium.

 

Neil Postman •

In our society, the trivialization of significant cultural symbols is largely conducted by commercial enterprise. This occurs not because the corporate world is greedy but because the adoration of technology pre-empts the adoration of anything else.

 

Helena Norberg-Hodge •

At the moment, the emerging global economy and the growing domination of science and technology are not only severing our connection to nature and to one another but also breaking down natural and cultural diversity. In so doing, we are threatening our very existence. In the natural world, diversity is an inescapable fact of life.

 

 

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© 199 4 The Humane Village Centre for Compassionate Design and the Authors

The Humane Village Centre for Compassionate Design is a not for profit organization.
Its objectives are:
• to promote the philosophy of design known as the "Humane Village" among designers, manufacturers and consumers through the publication of
material and the holding of seminars and conferences.
• to develop methods and advise corporations and consumers on issues related to socially responsible design;
• to promote and establish a network of interested parties and organizations.
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