" Of course, we are assured by the technocrats that once we reach the promised land of Newfanglia the opportunities for leisurely enjoyments-at least in the 'long run' after all the economic disturbances have been overcome-will be immense. To the engineering cast of mind, work, any kind of work, is input only; it is the effort expended in producing output. Since all input is regarded as a 'disutility', and all output as a 'utility', efficiency consists of reducing the ratio of input to output. If the engineer continues thus to lighten the burden of man's toil, the day must dawn when the curse of Adam is thrown off, and man is forever freed from the daily grind. He need thereafter do only the sort of work that interests him, and then only when he feels the inclination. Surely a dazzling prospect for man!
But what of the innate needs of ordinary men?"
"Televised lectures would be supplemented by auto-instructional programmes in the homes as an efficient and highly economical substitute for conventional tutorials and seminars. Indeed, in view of the existing technological possibilities, it is legitimate to doubt whether the universities as we know them today, as seats of both teaching and learning, will survive the turn of the century.
Yet if people are to be taught more effectively in the future while employing but a fraction of the teaching resources required today, there will also be a loss, a loss of human contact. Just as television has already succeeded in fragmenting the family, and in impoverishing the common fund of mutual experience through which the sense of family in nourished, so also must television apparatus and the teaching machines that are being installed in our universities and our schools, serve in time to isolate people further."
"Generations have passed, and, like the woods and the hedges that sheltered it, the rich local life centered on the township, parish and village, has been uprooted and blown away by the winds of change. Today no refuge remains from the desperate universal clamour for more efficiency, more excitement, and more novelty that goads us furiously onward, competing, accumulating, innovating-and inevitably destroying. Every step forward in technological progress, and particularly in the things most eagerly anticipated-swifter travel, depersonalized services, all the push button comforts and round the clock synthetic entertainments that are promised us-effectively transfers our dependence upon machines and, therefore, unavoidably constricts yet further the flow of understanding and sympathy between people. Thus in the unending pursuit of progress men are driven even farther apart and come to depend instead, for all their services and experiences, directly upon the creations of technology."
Technology & Growth The Price we Pay, 1969
E.J. Mishan
(Joshua Ezra Mishan (Manchester, 1917) is a British economist who is best known for his book The cost of economic growth(1967).)
April 16, 2009
The Wheelwright's Shop
"But no higher wage, no income, will buy for men that satisfaction which of old-until machinery made drudges of them-streamed into their muscles all day long from close contact with iron, timber, clay, wind and wave, horse strength. It tingled up in the niceties of touch, sight, scent. The very ears unawares received it, as when the plane went tapping in (under the mallet) to the hard ash with gentle sound. But these intimacies are over. Although they have so much more leisure men can now take little solace in life, of the sort the skilled handwork used to yield them."
The Wheelwright's shop, page 202, originally published 1930.
George Sturt
The Wheelwright's shop, page 202, originally published 1930.
George Sturt
"Exterminator" Primal Scream
Gun metal skies
Broken eyess
Claustrophobic concrete
English high-rise
Exterminate the underclass
Exterminate the telepaths
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
Incubating ultra-violent, psychic distortions
Slow death injectable, narcosis terminal
Damage receptors, fractured speech
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
Control violence halluncinatory programmes
Septicaemic interzone, psychic distortions
Satellite sickness tv junk
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
Insecticide shots for criminal cops
All jails are concentration camps all judges are bought
Everyone’s a prostitute
Everyone’s a prostitute
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
So look out kid, you keep it all hid
You think you’re free, but you ain’t free, just free to be hit
You’re an unchannelled frequency
Nobody’s listening
You imbalanced permanent
Nobody’s listening
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
No civil disobedience
XTRMNTR, 2000
John Madden Retires
"It's time. I'm 73 years old. My 50th wedding anniversary is this fall. I have two great sons and their families and my five grandchildren are at an age now when they know when I'm home and, more importantly, when I'm not...
It's been such a great ride... the NFL has been my life for more than 40 years, it has been my passion – it still is. I appreciate all of the people who are and were such an important part of the most enjoyable, most fun anyone could have... that great life with the teams, the players, the coaches, the owners, the League... my broadcasting partners Pat and Al... the production people and the fans ...is still great... it's still fun and that's what it makes it hard and that's why it took me a few months to make a decision.
I still love every part of it – the travel, the practices, the game film, the games, seeing old friends and meeting new people... but I know this is the right time."
New York Times
April 15, 2009
April 14, 2009
Newspapers Are on Fast, Worrisome Path to Oblivion: David Pauly
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- I just hope I die before all the newspapers do.
Not to be maudlin or to tempt my creator, but the recession, burdensome debt and the ad-stealing Internet portend the extinction of newspapers I can’t do without.
Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy threatens the future of three papers, the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune.
Gannett Co., publishers of USA Today and the Des Moines Register, recently slashed its quarterly dividend by 90 percent. The New York Times Co. has discontinued its dividend. Shares of McClatchy Co., owners of the Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald, now trade at 60 cents -- in a class with Fannie Mae, the broken mortgage investor.
My wife Jeannie and I buy three newspapers Monday through Friday and two on Saturday and Sunday. What would we do during and after breakfast without them? Don’t tell me that we’ll have our computers propped open on the kitchen table to read news on Web sites.
More from David Pauly
Not to be maudlin or to tempt my creator, but the recession, burdensome debt and the ad-stealing Internet portend the extinction of newspapers I can’t do without.
Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy threatens the future of three papers, the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune.
Gannett Co., publishers of USA Today and the Des Moines Register, recently slashed its quarterly dividend by 90 percent. The New York Times Co. has discontinued its dividend. Shares of McClatchy Co., owners of the Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald, now trade at 60 cents -- in a class with Fannie Mae, the broken mortgage investor.
My wife Jeannie and I buy three newspapers Monday through Friday and two on Saturday and Sunday. What would we do during and after breakfast without them? Don’t tell me that we’ll have our computers propped open on the kitchen table to read news on Web sites.
More from David Pauly
April 13, 2009
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Richard Brautigan, 1950
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Richard Brautigan, 1950
April 12, 2009
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