> ... [If] we now overvalue the machine, is it not because the mechanistic doctrine which has made us competent to design machines and control them also promises to give the scientist an equal hold over the living organisms he unfeelingly identifies with machines? In a world of machines, or of creatures that can be reduced to machines, technocrats would indeed be gods.
#LewisMumford in #MythOfTheMachine: #PentagonOfPower on #AI #ChatBot #ChatGPT #OverClaims and hype, but in 1970: same pattern

> ... [If after] four centuries.. we now overvalue the machine, is it not because the mechanistic doctrine which has made us competent to design machines and control them also promises to give the scientist an equal hold over the living organisms he unfeelingly identifies with machines? In a world of machines, or of creatures that can be reduced to machines, #technocrats would.. be gods. --- #LewisMumford, #MythOfTheMachine: #PentagonOfPower. p 72
1970 #Mumford on #Tech #RichGuy #AIHype

Since finding the _Towards Liberal Education_ (1948-1962) collection I've been trying to read some of the writers of the most memorable essays. #LewisMumford is mentioned by Neil Postman and Nicolas Carr so I binged his work, some of the smaller books. I haven't really read the big #MythOfTheMachine books but reading that captions of the photos has been rewarding. It feels like he's talking about AI and Satellites: recent #TechExhibitionism. Compare #CharlesBlondin with #vonWeizsacker

Winona LaDuke's tone, chiding a little boy, in her open letter to Shopping-Car-Space-Guy (SNS-buyer) seems appropriate. An illustration and it's description, an astronaut as capsule-mane, came to mind from Lewis Mumford's #MythOfTheMachine #PentagonOfPower(1971)

#Mumford #LewisMumford #MythOfTheMachine #PentagonOfPower #SpaceGuy #Astrounauts #ElonMusk

Maybe intelligence requires some sort of personality, something computers will only be able to mimic.. #LewisMumford writes more about computers in the book but the image of #blankness here is interesting. Funny we're supposed to take chess-playing as a measure of intelligence. Why not something chickens can do? Like laying and hatching eggs, caring for a helpless little baby? #MythOfTheMachine

#LewisMumford In #MythOfTheMachine applying the ideas he introduced from #Comte, of a 170 years ago, to the #Pentagon . Even #Specialists need a more Holisti or #SynopticView . The #Shelly #PercyShelley quote is from #QueenMab.
'Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton. '
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley#Queen_Mab_(1813)

> "The beleaguered– even 'obsolete'–individual would be entirely de-skilled, reduced to a passive, inert, 'trivial accessory to the machine.' Technical surveillance and limitless data-collection—'an all-seeing eye' (Panopticon)—would monitor every 'individual... the totalitarian technocracy, centralizing... ignoring the real needs... values of human life, might produce a world 'fit only for machines to live in'"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Machine#cite_note-CounterPunch-2014-03-21-11
#LewisMumford in #MythOfTheMachine , #attentioneconomy ?

> “Behold the ultimate religion of our seemingly rational age—the Myth of the Machine! Bigger and bigger, more and more, farther and farther, faster and faster become ends in themselves, as expressions of godlike power. . . The going was the goal—a defensible doctrine for colliding atoms or falling bodies, but not for men.”
- https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/12/archives/the-myth-of-the-machine.html
#LewisMumford #Concorde #MythOfTheMachine #Tech #Technics #speed