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Technics and Civilization

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Lewis Mumford is widely regarded as a critic of architecture, but his true importance in intellectual history is as a critic of technology and the myth of progress that accompanies technology, making it seem as if every technological advance is a step forward in civilization. That the events from 1945 onward dispute this claim would seem evident, but themselves are brushed over in favor of the prevailing paradigm.

Mumford was the first to take a critical look at technology and its accompanying mythos, and even though this book was later surpassed by his masterpiece, The Myth of the Machine, it is still worth reading for its approach to the tenor of its time (written during the Depression).

You can safely ignore the last chapters when Mumford attempts to offer an alternative to the technological society. Like most critics, he is mercifully short on alternatives. (Considering what alternatives were given humanity over the centuries, you can understand why I said that.) Until we truly understand technology and the role it has taken in our lives, we will be no closer to a solution than Mumford was in the Thirties.

For anyone who wishes to study the intellectual history of the West, this is an indispensible volume.

Mumford is widely considered the first modern person to write critically about the intricate relationship between human technology and human civilization. This book is arguably the cornerstone of the rapidly growing field of the history of technology. It is valuable because of its extensive attention to the past and its demonstration of complex links between technology, economics, society and culture. Mumford's musings about the future at the end of the book are its least important part.

Readers should be aware that the 2010 University of Chicago Press edition of Technics and Civilization omits Mumford's 15 pages of photographs. As an excuse they say that such a reproduction is neither "practical" nor "necessary," instead they provide a set of search terms that may or may not allow one to find each image on the Internet.

I am, to say the least, disappointed by this decision. 1) Given that most of these images are out of copyright and are readily available (if nothing else, one could simply scan them from an earlier edition of the book) what are the practical obstacles to reproduction? 2) The ability to interrupt one's reading to search for and possibly find a particular image on the Internet is hardly a viable substitute for having images embedded in the text.

I suggest that readers find an earlier, complete edition of this work, if possible.

Mumford has got to be one of the most over-looked (by main-stream) social critics of our time. He covers and unravels our confusing society so well, even though this book was written some time ago. Mumford's points ring quite true even in the 21st century.

Lengthy read but, for those who are serious about making sense of "why" things are they way they are here in the "civilized" world, Mumford is worth it.

Mumford reaches back over a thousand years in search of an explanation of how Western Civilization developed culturally and materially. He refutes the contention that mechanical progress began in Britain during the Industrial Revolution and argues that man had used machine instruments for at least the previous seven centuries.

In Europe machines became a part of the whole fabric of cultural life. Mumford distinguishes the machine, a mechanism to modify the environment for human benefit, and " `The machine,' ...a shorthand reference to the entire technological complex."(12) Furthermore a tool and machine are distinguished by the skill and dexterity of the operator and, whereas "utensils, apparatus, and utilities" refer to chemical transformations (brewing, for example), machines "transform the environment by changing the shape and location of objects."(11)

Mumford identifies three overlapping and interdependent periods where machines and society interacted to define modern industrial culture. The eotechnic phase began in about the tenth century and was characterized by water and wood; the Paleotechnic phase emerged in the eighteenth century and was characterized by coal and iron; and third, or present Neotechnic phase, is characterized by electricity and alloys. Leading up to each of these periods, society experienced a period of cultural preparation and adaptation.

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the monastery was a refuge of order. Within the sanctity of its walls, the clock regulated routine and discipline. Thus, according to Mumford, "the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age."(14) Time and the adaptation of space in the middle ages changed people's perspectives toward mechanical improvement which was further stimulated by the potential of profits from emerging capitalism. Eotechnic life refined the senses after the religious asceticism of the preceding era.

Mechanization between the tenth and seventeenth centuries is illuminating. Mumford illustrates this in the context of a civilization emerging within a mountain-and-river valley section. At the tops of mountain, outcroppings of ore led to quarrying and mining. The pick and the hammer were the earliest tools, augmented by machines in later stages. The forest stretching from the mountain top to the valley floor harbored "the hunter who stalks his game: his is possibly the oldest deliberate technical operation of mankind for in their origin the weapon [missile/hammerhead, knife, ax] and the tool are interchangeable."(61) Heading down the valley the river stream served as a transportation route leading to the development of hollowed out wooden canoes. Upstream, pastures fostered spinning and weaving by herders. Downstream, the domain of the peasants, farmers cultivated the lowlands. Here man's tools remained mostly unchanged, but his "utensils and utilities are many: the irrigation ditch, the cellar...[etc.]."(63) Finally, when the stream empties into the ocean, fisherman learned to weave nets and baskets and, with boats, trade and communication become possible.

Mining led to capitalism by requiring investment capital to fund expensive operations and spread the risk. In addition, to buy capital goods, a sound currency was necessary. Wood was the most important component of early technology. It propped up the mines, was used to make machines, and was a source of fuel. The woodman was a technical innovator; "the lathe...his decisive contribution to the development of machines."(80)

Warfare organized human effort and utilized machines in a cohesive manner. Firearms added to technics by the unprecedented need for iron, the development of a power cylinder (the barrel) and piston (the projectile), and the development of heavy fortifications. The ability to make standardized weapons, steel, and uniforms for the military encouraged a consumer market for civilians.

In the paleotechnic phase the Industrial Revolution transformed the way men thought, the manner of production, and the way of life. These ideas are so profound that historians saw them as new, but Mumford shows how they were rooted in the past. What is most striking is that they occurred in England where the eotechnic phase had had the least impact and England, therefore, was susceptible to change. Whereas technical development in the earlier phase was not a complete breach with the past, "paleotechnical industry, on the other hand, arose out of the breakdown of European society and carried the process of disruption to the finish."(153) The machine thrust society into an era of "barbarism." This had as its basis the shift to coal as the new energy source, and iron as the medium of construction which gave us the steam engine. The cost of steam power was expensive and this encouraged concentration and monopoly, in contrast to water and wind power, which were free. Military demands for steel influenced the Darby process for cast iron and made it more affordable. Mumford says the paleotechnical period was characterized by warfare, environmental pollution, the degradation of the worker as a machine tender, diseases, and from a rising population. The net result was a lowered quality of life. Mumford sees the paleotechnic phase as a period of transition.(211)

To Mumford, the neotechnic phase is more like the eotechnic phase, except in degree. Fifteenth century ideas have become reality, but class and national struggles persist. Since the neotechnic phase is ongoing, its full implication cannot be measured. It began with the Fourneyron's water-turbine which increased water power output nine fold, but electrical power characterizes the period. Electricity can be transported efficiently and used in many ways. In the Neotechnic phase, the use of the scientific method is widened to include the humanities. This awareness promots social order and clarity.

"In the neotechnic phase, the main initiative comes, not from the ingenious inventor, but from the scientist who establishes the general law: the invention is the derivative product."(217) Improvements in the internal combustion engine provide a new source of power which changes the social order. Rapid transportation is possible by the automobile and the airplane. Communication is further enhanced by the telegraph and the telephone. But, "whereas the growth and multiplication of machines was a definite characteristic of the paleotechnic period, [Mumford says] one may already say pretty confidently that the refinement, the diminution, and the partial elimination of the machine is characteristic of the emerging neotechnic economy."(258)

Lewis Mumford's, Technics and Civilization, may be one of the most important and influential works concerning technological progress in Western Civilization and its cultural and environmental effects. The study covers a wide area of historical past stretching from the Roman Empire all the way to the present (1934). The importance of Mumford's study lies in the fact that it is not just another technophilic antiquarian study of technological improvement but rather it is an intelligent and highly critical look at the cultural development that gave rise to the machine and, from there, a critical study of how the "progress" of the machine affected the culture it was developing within. Mumford shows how the progression of the machine has affected nearly every aspect of human society including but not limited to sexuality, economy, ecology, warfare, occurrence of disease, and medicine.

The terminology surrounding matters of technology is not firmly defined and usually becomes a question of post-structural analysis when the meanings of these words are debated by academics in various fields of study. One of the main areas of confusion has been over the meaning of the word "tool" and the meaning of the word "machine." To quell confusion over the meaning of his own study, Mumford has given each word his own definition. According to Mumford: "[t]he tool lends it self to manipulation" while "[t]he machine lends it self to automatic action" (p.10). These definitions are important for understanding the meaning behind Mumford's study.

Mumford traces the cultural origins of the first machine, the mechanical clock, to the influences of monasticism and the Catholic teachings. The Church teachings of the early millennium stressed an extreme denial of the body which was viewed as sinful and polluted with the profanities of the earthly realm. Mumford believed that this denial of the body led to the growth of hatred for the organic which in turn fostered a cultural admiration for the machine as something that was disassociated from a polluted organic nature. Thus, as the first true machine, the mechanical clock fostered one of the original disassociations - the disassociation of time from the rhythms of nature. Although the Church teachings were based on the subjective belief in a utopian afterlife, the extreme denial of organic and natural earthly pleasures advocated by the early church caused an objective view of the organic to develop. By the 16th century the new protestant religion and the growth of objectivism coincided with what Mumford labeled the "disassociation of the animate and the mechanical" (p.31). This disassociation opened the floodgates for the objective sciences which were developing a common cultural understanding of the organic as merely a conglomeration of dead material to be studied and manipulated. The growth of objectivism coupled with the new protestant teachings, specifically the abandonment of the prohibition of usury, enabled the development of the early stages of capitalist economics by allowing God's work to be viewed as the accumulation of personal wealth. Not surprisingly, it was to the machine that these possessed western men turned to increase the production of wealth.

At this point in time, western civilization was in the first of three periods of technological development. Mumford labels these three stages based upon their method of energy production and organic material usage: the Eotechnic phase (based on water energy and wood), the Paleotechnic phase (based on coal energy and iron), and the Neotechnic phase (based on electricity and the alloys). Mumford explains that these stages overlap in many cases and should not be viewed as clean categories. Nevertheless, they do provide a useful framework for understanding the progression of the machine. The origins of capitalism occurred during the Eotechnic phase. Mumford finds the mine to be the central stimulant of Eotechnic technological progress. New mining technologies were created to extract increasing amounts of organic material to be converted into ever-increasing wealth for the emerging capitalist class. For Mumford, the Eotechnic phase cemented the alliance between capitalism and technology.

Soon, deforestation for fuel to be used in iron manufacture became a major cause for the progression into the Paleotechnic phase and the usage of coal as a primary energy source. Mumford labeled this Paleotechnic phase "The New Barbarism" (p.153). Although it decreased the levels of deforestation, the burning of coal ushered in profound environmental damage to the air and water. Through the use of coal and the development of steam power, production of iron and other goods increased exponentially at the expense of the emergent proletariat class. Mumford argued that this period gave birth to the "unsustainable society" (p.157) where military interests and warfare grew together with increased production and the need for continuous, escalating consumption, all of which were only possible due to the technological progress of the Paleotechnic period. As an example of this alliance, Mumford explains how the American Steel Manufacturing group deliberately destroyed the possibility of an arms reduction agreement, at the international arms conference of 1927, in order to maintain their profit share in the arms trade. (p.165).

The Neotechnic phase was ushered in with the spread of electricity as a power source at the beginning of the 19th century. The creation of electric power dramatically cleaned the air and water and the increased production enabled by the efficiency of electric power enabled another boom in the production of consumer items. However, the new phase also increased the power of those in control of technology, and Mumford shows how Neotechnic inventions such as the radio, photography, and the telephone were used by those in power to manipulate and manufacture consent in populations. Nevertheless, in the Neotechnic period, Mumford saw what he believed to be a possibility for the creation of a humane and compassionate society as well as a return to the organic.

Mumford saw the Paleotechnic phase as one that enabled and rewarded the anti-social characteristics of human nature, thus it inevitably created a society of inequality, increasing pollution, anomie, and warfare. Although Mumford was very aware of the destructive and anti-social record of technological progress, he refused to argue for the abandonment of the machine. Mumford stated that "lacking a cooperative social intelligence and good-will, our most refined technics promises no more for societies improvement..."(p.215). In this he is placing all the blame for the anti-social and ecologically genocidal effects of the machine on the economic organization of society. The problem with this analysis is that it is not teleologically secure. Written during the early years of the rise of Communism in the former Russian Kingdom, Mumford held out hope that, through Communism, the power of the machine could be harnessed to provide for the general welfare of society and that his hope in the future of technics would be born out. However, history has shown that technology in service of Communism, while it may help to normalize consumption, still produces many of the same destructive effects that it produced under capitalism - specifically militarism and environmental destruction. The hard reality is that Capitalism was not the cause of technological anti-socialism. Capitalism is a function of the same anti-social impulse that gave rise to technology - the will towards domination. Given the history of mechanical progress, it becomes essential to view technology as inherently anti-social. Rather than looking towards alternative methods of using machines of power to fix our world, as Mumford did, we should be thinking of and developing methods with which we can create a future world where machines and domination are not only unnecessairy but are also non-existant.

This book is a historical interpretation of the effect of technology on society. Mumford traces the Industrial Revolution to its earliest roots, which he argues, go back to the invention of reliable timepieces in the Eleventh Century (whose invention was motivated, according to Mumford, by the need for recognizing prayer times in Catholic monasteries). Mumford also stresses the effects mining, the military, and the production of arms had on each other and on the development of technology, from earliest recorded history through modern times. Another recurrent theme is power, and how discoveries of new ways to harness power led to economic development. The final part of the book discusses the invention and assimilation of "the machine," as a generic concept for an advanced technology item. The book is illustrated with several sections of black-and-white photographs and reproductions of artwork. End material includes a chronology of inventions, a lengthy annotated bibliography, and an index.

In a discussion of the motivation behind invention, Mumford notes that "a good part of the mechanical elements in the day are attempts to counteract the effects of lengthening time and space distance. The refrigeration of eggs, for example, is an effort to space their distribution more uniformly than the hen herself is capable of doing...The accompanying pieces of mechanical apparatus do nothing to improve the product itself: refrigeration merely halts the process of decomposition." Is this progress? Although he originally wrote this book back in the 1930s, well before our present energy crises, Mumford was adamant that renewable energy sources must supply the power of the future. He is an advocate for wind and water energy, and he dreams of a day when the power of the sun can be used to generate electricity. Mumford is also disturbed by rampant consumerism. He quotes a Hoover Committee report on a survey of Recent Economics that states "The survey has proved conclusively, what has long been held theoretically to be true, that wants are almost insatiable; that one want makes way for another. The conclusion is that economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied." Interesting points such as these, which sound remarkably fresh today, can be found scattered amongst the text. Unfortunately, however, such gems are overshadowed by the sheer volume of text. This book would benefit greatly from an abridgment that would bring out the best, most important ideas by eliminating the wordy asides and statements of personal opinion.

From the beginning of time, technology has affected our lives. Learn how every invention (from the greatest milestone of them all: the clock) through history influences society and the way we live and think.

Excellent source for everyone wanting to reflect deeply on technology.

Too bad Mumford wasn't a better thinker. He published everywhere and wrote on everything during a fifty-plus year career; urban planners know him best these days, but he was the New Yorker architecture critic for years and wrote on literature, culture, and politics for all the big magazines: MacCalls, Harper's, The New Republic, Seven Arts. Technics and Civilization (1934) wasn't his last book on technology; he returned to the subject again in The Pentagon of Power, two volumes, published around 1969. Technics and Civilization asks readers to consider intelligently how to better use technology to shape lives worth living, rather than to allow technology, or our use of it, to shape life unexaminedly. Mumford contributed so much to letters and to public life that we owe it to ourselves to read him, even if the limitations of his sometimes utopian ideas become too often apparent (remember, the Unabomber is a fan), because his ideas on social organizations are crack