The Machine

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 122, 16 February 1935, Page 20

The Machine

“Modern man, who has shown far | more intelligence in inventing new || machines than in controlling them for l| the greater happiness of the greater " number, is tending to revolt, mentally 3 at least, against their increasing dourination,”. says the “Morning Post.” (London). g “Machines and the speeding up of g life which they connote do not, of | course, lack the enthusiastic, admira- , | tion of the .young, but who will be the - | first Staid philosopher deliberately to. . jg put forward as an axiom that, with the . exception of those deliberately, con- gj sfructed a sweapons of offence, ma- ||i chines, far from being transitory incon- I veniences in human evolution, are ||| things of beauty which ought to re- k main with us for ever? j|| “It is useless, he might point out, to || say to the engineers and inventors, l|i ‘Thus far and no farther,’ “Must we not either accept machin- Igl ery as something which is liable to be- if! come more and more efficient (even if ||| sometimes more dangerous) as time goes op, or denounce it altogether, uh- M equivocally, lock-stock-and-barrel? “It might be possible to try to sup || press the inventors of potentially dan- | gerous types of mechanism; but human 1 evolution is showing astounding com- g petence in producing the sort of brain | which thinks in mechanical equations.” .pj