A lot of the critique of our growing mechanization was actually at its strongest, and arguably at its most perceptive, during the late '60s.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Mechanization best serves mediocrity.
The industrial revolution that defined the first half of the 20 century marked the start of modern business, typified by high-volume, large-scale organizations. Mechanization created a culture of business derived from the capabilities and needs of the time.
For me, Mexploitation seemed like something that should have existed, but didn't.
I think about the automobile, I think about like, when I was a kid, you know, the invention of the answering machine, which I was like, 'Wow.' Or call waiting, which was, like, very big. It was a very big thing. Call waiting was a very big thing. And these incremental innovations happen constantly.
I find the 1940s very compelling. It is a very excitable period in the U.S. when, whether out of necessity or not, everybody was reinventing themselves.
We now know how things were in the '60s and how things have changed, but I don't think we appreciate how much things have changed.
What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.
As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a 'singularity.'
I was born in the 1980s, so learning about the late 1960s was really fascinating, not only just because of the way things looked and sounded but because of what was going on in society at that time.
I hate the fact that so much of our life is computerised rather than mechanised.