But tending machinery was one thing; defining what we were trying to do and why we were doing it, and developing ways to measure how well the job was done - this was something else again.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As an engineer, I tended to maintain my own equipment along with developing the processes for it.
If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.
I remember that, one day, I was visiting one training center in the 1990s that was teaching people how to fix Volkswagen engines from the 1960s, which were no longer sold. So you were training people on a skill that had zero value. The reason is that they hadn't received any new equipment in 20 years.
And the buying of new machinery meant not only the possibility of production, but even the new technology, 'cos as I mentioned before, we were back of seven, eight years.
My wife and I, unlike many intellectuals, spent five years working on assembly lines. We came to fully understand the criticisms of the industrial age, in which you are an appendage of a machine that sets the pace.
When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.
Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.
Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
Because of the increased efficiency of machines, it is getting harder and harder for a human to make a productive contribution to society.
At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.
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