We Can Make The Trains Run On

The Line-by-line, Sequential, Continuous Form Of The Printed Page Slowly Began To Lose Its Resonance As A Metaphor Of How Knowledge Was To Be Acquired And How The World Was To Be Understood. "knowing" The Facts Took On A New Meaning, For It Did Not Imply That One Understood Implications, Background, Or Connections. Telegraphic Discourse Permitted No Time For Historical Perspectives And Gave No Priority To The Qualitative. To The Telegraph, Intelligence Meant Knowing Of Lots Of Things, Not Knowing About Them.

I Am Not A Luddite. I Am Suspicious Of Technology. I Am Perfectly Aware Of Its Benefits, But I Also Try To Pay Attention To Some Of The Negative Effects.

We Had Learned How To Invent Things, And The Question Of Why We Invent Things Receded In Importance. The Idea That If Something Could Be Done It Should Be Done Was Born In The Nineteenth Century. And Along With It, There Developed A Profound Belief In All The Principles Through Which Invention Succeeds: Objectivity, Efficiency, Expertise, Standardization, Measurement, And Progress. It Also Came To Be Believed That The Engine Of Technological Progress Worked Most Efficiently When People Are Conceived Of Not As Children Of God Or Even As Citizens But As Consumers-that Is To Say, As Markets.

Voting Is The Next-to-last Refuge Of The Politically Impotent. The Last Refuge, Of Course, Is Giving Your Opinion To A Pollster.

Embedded In Every Technology There Is A Powerful Idea, Sometimes Two Or Three Powerful Ideas. Like Language Itself, A Technology Predisposes Us To Favor And Value Certain Perspectives And Accomplishments And To Subordinate Others. Every Technology Has A Philosophy, Which Is Given Expression In How The Technology Makes People Use Their Minds, In How It Codifies The World, In Which Of Our Senses It Amplifies, In Which Of Our Emotional And Intellectual Tendencies It Disregards.