Technics and Civilization
Seminal work by Lewis Mumford.
- Neotechnic times, Mumford presciently notes that a small producer can deliver what is needed when it is needed more efficiently than paleotechnic assembly lines. Combining this with modern technology, this implies economic distribution via localized eco-industry.
- Paleotechnic (1700-1900) - "The invention of coal-fired steam powered factories and the installation of capital-intensive machinery leads to a necessarily gigantic round-the-clock scale of production supported by unskilled machine tenders. Labour becomes a commodity, rather than an inalienable set of skills, the labourer who tended machines, lived in slums, and was paid starvation wages, became physically stunted and socially and spiritually stultified." - Wikipedia
- Monks invented ordnance and gunpowder.
- Leading utopians of eotecnnic period brood upon the machine as the savior. Note that this has not changed with today's technoutopians, such as Kurzweil and Diamandis
- "Robbery is perhaps the oldest labor-saving device"
- The army is a total consumer, and in fact a negative producer. The army produces illth, the opposite of wealth - according to Ruskin
- "The belief in the good life as the goods life" took hold in the eolitbic period
- Rudolph Nurnberg - wire pulling machine, 1400
- Critique of patents p142 - essentially: that the last person in a long chain of innovation who gets to pocket the money by patenting - is a ridiculous concept
