Volume 17, Number 7 · November 4, 1971
Machines Without a Cause
By Tom Bottomore
Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society
by Emmanuel G. Mesthene
Harvard (Harvard Studies in Technology and Society), 127 pp., $4.95
La Civilisation au carrefour
by Radovan Richta
Editions Anthropos, 466 pp., 36 Frs.
Innovations: Scientific, Technological and Social
by Dennis Gabor
Oxford, 113 pp., $4.95
Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation
by Anthony G. Oettinger, by Sema Marks
Harvard (Harvard Studies in Technology and Society), 302 pp., $5.95
Overskill: The Decline of Technology in Modern Civilization
by Eugene S. Schwartz
Quadrangle, 338 pp., $8.95
In the space of a few decades men have attained, in great measure, a goal which was long anticipated and desired. They have become, in Descartes' phrase, 'the masters and possessors of nature.' A scientific and technological revolution, which continues at an accelerating pace, has already largely accomplished the substitution of knowledge for physical labor as the principal force of production, and we live in the conditions which Marx, over a century ago, saw as the final outcome of capitalist production: 'The process of production has ceased to be a process of labor…. It is man's productive powers in general, his understanding of nature and his ability to master it, which now appear as the basis of production and wealth.'[1]
Review, 4569 words
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