Technopoly (26 page)

1.
Plato, p. 96.

2.
Freud, pp. 38-39.

3.
This fact is documented in Keith Hoskin’s “The Examination, Disciplinary Power and Rational Schooling,” in
History of Education
, vol. VIII, no. 2 (1979), pp. 135-46. Professor Hoskin provides the following story about Farish: Farish was a professor of engineering at Cambridge and designed and installed a movable partition wall in his Cambridge home. The wall moved on pulleys between downstairs and upstairs. One night, while working late downstairs and feeling cold, Farish pulled down the partition. This is not much of a story, and history fails to disclose what happened next. All of which shows how little is known of William Farish.

4.
For a detailed exposition of Mumford’s position on the impact of the mechanical clock, see his
Technics and Civilization
.

1.
Marx, p. 150.

2.
Perhaps another term for a tool-using culture is “third-world country,” although vast parts of China may be included as tool-using.

3.
For a detailed analysis of medieval technology, see Jean Gimpel’s
The Medieval Machine
.

4.
Quoted in Muller, p. 30.

5.
See his
Medieval Technology and Social Change
.

6.
De Vries’ findings are recounted by Alvin Toffler in his article “Value Impact Forecaster: A Profession of the Future,” in Baier and Rescher’s book
Values and the Future: The Impact of Technological Change on American Values
(New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 3.

1.
Giedion, p. 40.

2.
The best account of the history of Utopias may be found in Segal.

3.
See David Lin ton’s “Luddism Reconsidered” in
Etcetera
, Spring 1985, pp. 32-36.

4.
Tocqueville, p. 404.

1.
For a detailed examination of the impact of the printing press on Western culture, see Eisenstein.

2.
See Postman’s
Amusing Ourselves to Death
for a more full-bodied treatment of the telegraph.

1.
An emphatic exception among those sociologists who have written on this subject is Arnold Gehlen. See his
Man in the Age of Technology
.

2.
Though this term is by no means original with E. D. Hirsch, Jr., its current popularity is attributable to Hirsch’s book
Cultural Literacy
.

3.
This poignant phrase is also the title of one of Lasch’s most important books.

4.
James Beniger,
The Control Revolution
, p. 13. As I have already noted, Beniger’s book is the best source for an understanding of the technical means of eliminating—i.e., controlling—information.

5.
Tocqueville, p. 262.

6.
Lewis, p. x.

7.
See Arendt.

1.
I am not sure whether the company still exists, but by way of proving that it at least once did, here is the address of the H
AGOTH
Corporation as I once knew it: 85 NW Alder Place, Department C, Issaquah, Washington 98027.

2.
All these facts and more may be found in Payer, or in Inlander et al.

3.
Reiser, p. 160.

4.
Ibid., p. 161.

5.
Payer, p. 127.

6.
Quoted in ibid.

7.
For a fascinating account of Laennec’s invention, see Reiser.

8.
Ibid., p. 38.

9.
Ibid., p. 230.

10.
Horowitz, p. 31.

11.
Ibid., p. 80.

12.
Cited in Inlander et al., p. 106.

13.
Cited in ibid., p. 113.

1.
New York Times
, August 7, 1990, sect. C, p. 1.

2.
Personal Computing
, June 29, 1990, p. 36.

3.
New York Times
, November 24, 1989.

4.
Publishers Weekly
, March 2, 1990, p. 26.

5.
Bottom Line
, July 15, 1989, p. 5.

6.
For a concise and readable review of the development of the computer, I would recommend Arno Penzias’
Ideas and Information: Managing in a High-Tech World
.

7.
Quoted in Hunt, p. 318.

8.
Searle, p. 30.

9.
See Gozzi, pp. 177-80.

10.
See Milgram.

11.
Weizenbaum, p. 32.

12.
The March 1991 issue of
The Sun
reports that Lance Smith, who is two years old, is called “the Mozart of video games,” mainly because he gets astronomical scores on one of Nintendo’s games. This is as close to approaching the artistry of Mozart as computers can get.

13.
See J. D. Bolter’s 1991 book,
Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing
(Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).

14.
Science Digest
, June 1984.

15.
Both men are quoted in the Raleigh, North Carolina,
News and Observer
, Sunday, August 13, 1989.

16.
Katsch, p. 44.

1.
Cited in Gould, p. 75. I am indebted to Gould’s wonderful book for providing a concise history of the search to quantify intelligence.

2.
The National Elementary Principal
March/April 1975.

3.
Weizenbaum, p. 203.

4.
The occasion, in the spring of 1990, was a retreat outside of Washington, D.C The group of twenty-three Democratic congressmen was led by Richard Gephardt.

5.
I have, of course, made up these ridiculous statistics. The point is, it doesn’t matter.

6.
See the preceding note.

7.
An interesting example of the tyranny of statistics is in the decision made by the College Board (on November 1, 1990) that its Scholastic Aptitude Test will not include asking students to write an essay. To determine
the student’s ability to write, the SAT will continue to use a multiple-choice test that measures one’s ability to memorize rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It would seem reasonable—wouldn’t it?—that the best way to find out how well someone writes is to ask him or her to write something. But in Technopoly reason is a strange and wondrous thing. For a documentation of all of this, see the January 16, 1991, issue of
The Chronicle of Higher Education
.

8.
See Keith W. Hoskin and Richard H. Macve, “The Genesis of Accountability: The West Point Connections,” in
Accounting Organizations and Society
, vol. 13, no. 1 (1988), pp. 37-73. I am especially indebted to these scholars for their account of the development of modern systems of management.

1.
Cited in Hayek, p. 201. I am indebted to Hayek’s book for his history of the Ecole Polytechnique.

2.
Ibid., p. 21.

3.
Myrdal, p. 6.

4.
I have borrowed much of the material dealing with the distinctions between natural science and social research from my own essay “Social Science as Moral Theology,” in
Conscientious Objections
.

1.
Although in some ways Boorstin’s book is dated, to him and his book go credit for calling early attention to the effects of an image society.

2.
The New Republic
, February 18, 1991, p. 42.

1.
What follows is a version of a proposal I have made several times before. A somewhat fuller version appears in my
Teaching as a Conserving Activity
.

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