Lewis Mumford - Authoritarian and Democratic Technics (1963) скачать в хорошем качестве

Lewis Mumford - Authoritarian and Democratic Technics (1963)

"The tension between small-scale association and large-scale organization, between personal autonomy and institutional regulation, between remote control and diffused local intervention, has now created a critical situation. If our eyes had been open, we might long ago have discovered this conflict deeply embedded in technology itself." "My thesis, to put it bluntly, is that from late neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other man-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable. If I am right, we are now rapidly approaching a point at which, unless we radically alter our present course, our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted, so that every residual autonomy will be wiped out, or will be permitted only as a playful device of government, like national ballotting for already chosen leaders in totalitarian countries. [...]" This paper is Mr. Mumford's speech at the Fund for the Republic Tenth Anniversary Convocation on "Challenges to Democracy in the Next Decade," held in New York City, January 21, 1963.