MACHINE-PROUD AGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 December 1933, Page 2

MACHINE-PROUD AGE

SIR GILES SCOTT’S VISION. Discontented crowds marching on the , factories, breaking up the machines, and themselves being electrocuted or scalded to death in the wild orgy of destruction. This Wellsian phantasy of the future, following the revolt of the masses against the machines, was visualised by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in his inaugural address at the opening of the new session at the Royal Institute of British Architects recently.

As an epilogue Sir Giles envisaged he people back to a simpler and more human ideal, living hard-working, simple but contented lives. It was Sir Giles’s way of protesting against the tyranny of the machine. “Let us be proud of our machinery,” he commented. “I wonder. Let us rather beware of our machinery.”

“Already we hear the first rumblings of discontent and disillusion; unemployment seems worse in those countries employing most machinery, and unless science, which has devoted so much thought to production, turns its attention to consumption, in order to adjust the balance, we shall find that as this tendency increases to make the machine do all the work of our hands, discontent will increase and eventually give way to anger.”