Bunny
December 25th 07, 07:28 PM
-- a
glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete --
was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and
technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to
assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly
because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and
revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on
the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly
regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it
was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various
devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage,
have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and
the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully
repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to
all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and
glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete --
was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and
technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to
assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly
because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and
revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on
the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly
regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it
was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various
devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage,
have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and
the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully
repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to
all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and