Lewis Mumford – författare

"Technics and Civilization" first presented its compelling history of the machine and critical study of its effects on civilization in 1934 - before television, the personal computer, and the Internet even appeared on our periphery. Drawing upon art, science, philosophy, and the history of culture, Lewis Mumford explained the origin of the machine age and traced its social results, asserting that the development of modern technology had its roots in the Middle Ages rather than the Industrial Revolution. Mumford sagely argued that it was the moral, economic, and political choices we made, not the machines that we used, that determined our industrially driven economy. Equal parts powerful history and polemic, "Technics and Civilization" was the first comprehensive attempt in English to portray the development of the machine age over the last thousand years - and to predict the pull the technological still holds over us today.

In this concluding volume of The Myth of the Machine, Mumford brings to a head his radical revisions of the stale popular conceptions of human and technological progress. Far from being an attack on science and technics, The Pentagon of Power seeks to establish a more organic social order based on technological resources. Index; photographs.

Lewis Mumford - architectural critic, theorist of technology, urbanologist, city planner, cultural critic, historian, biographer, and philosopher - was the author of more than thirty influential books, many of which expounded his views on the perils of urban sprawl and a society obsessed with "technics." Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure - as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction - is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

A collection of essays by the respected social commentator on some problems faced by cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Paris, on the architecture of Saarinen, Le Corbusier, and Wright, and on city and highway planning.

Originally published in 1957, this volume compares the 20th Century transformation of human life to the revolution which swept early man into the first civilized communities. It shows how each radical new stage of human development grew out of changes in human personality and consciousness, such as the invention of language and symbols, the origins of universal religions and the mechanization of everyday life. Despite the threat that the author foresees from an over-reliance on automation, the book maintains that humanity still has the means, spiritual, personal and technological to create a sustainable future for itself, by increasing the usefulness and freedom of all men.

Originally published in 1957, this volume compares the 20th Century transformation of human life to the revolution which swept early man into the first civilized communities. It shows how each radical new stage of human development grew out of changes in human personality and consciousness, such as the invention of language and symbols, the origins of universal religions and the mechanization of everyday life. Despite the threat that the author foresees from an over-reliance on automation, the book maintains that humanity still has the means, spiritual, personal and technological to create a sustainable future for itself, by increasing the usefulness and freedom of all men.