TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18946, 16 May 1933, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Technocracy. One must keep abreast of the times. “Technocracy” is the latest word. Like every word which leaps into prominence and acquires a vogue, it is apt to add nothing in the least new to our previous knowledge, or even to our previous range of ideas, says a writer in the British Weekly. It is apt to be simply an abstract noun in which the impalpable and ghostly elements of a situation, or of a problem,- am permitted to take up their abode in some sort of fabric.

Like most abstract nouns, Technocracy is Greek. It was the great service which Greek philosophy rendered the Western world, to bring the rich and reeking impulses, passions, enterprises of the human mind under the control of a few abstract nouns. There is nothing new in Technocracy, not oven in the word. The “techno” has long been familiar to us in our technical schools and in a word which has become acclimatised amongst us and gives now, when properly used, a certain briskness to one’s speech: I mean the word “technique.” The latter portion of Technocracy—the “ cracy ” is even more familiar: democracy, aristocracy, plutocracy, all these have we known from our youth up.

Everything, therefore, was in readiness for the arrival of a master-mind which would assemble the parts and present us with ,h e Avord Technocracy. It was given to an American, it would appear, to name the beast! A great man, said Carlyle, is a man to AA’hom it was given to say what everyone, was on the point; of saying. The man who launched the word Technocracy upon a waiting world ought to have that meed of praise.

According to a primitive fragment in the Hebrew Scriptures, it was man who gave names to the beasts of the field. To put a name upon a beast was, that is to say, one of the first tasks which Almighty God deputed to man, His servant and His instrument. The naming of the beast and the naming of new beasts may, if we do not hesitaTe to give to the phrase all that the phrase is capable of including, still be man’s characteristic function in the world! For to put a name upon any beast is already to declare that you are its master, or that you will be its master. When we enn name a thing avo have got our foot upon its neck! The word Technocracy, the vorv word itself, may mean that man has at last begun to throw things out of the saddle, and has taken his scat there, where he belongs!