Monday, July 5, 2010

The failure of technology...

"Here lies the difference between the automaton and all tools requiring continuous handling; its purpose is automatic and uninterrupted mechanical functioning. We are surrounded by an automatism toward which all branches of technology are developing. The greater part of our production tools work automatically. Our transport is automatized in the form of the ubiquitous railways, ships, motor cars, airplanes, elevators, and so on. Our light, water , and heating systems function automatically.
There are vending and food serving automatons, all of them designed for the task of repetitious performance with mechanical uniformity, just as a phonograph record repeats the same piece over and over. It is exactly this automatism that gives its peculiar stamp to our civilization and sets it apart from other eras. It is automatism by which our technology achieves its growing "perfection." Its signature is the independent and unchanging repetition of its apparatus."
-Friedrich Georg Junger
"the failure of technology (perfection without purpose)"
written in the summer of 1939.

This book has become my manifesto for all things engineering , audio, production, and art.. in the summer of 2010. 


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