PAGE 10 February 14, 1985 fe atu re S

 

 

 

 

ur technological demise

From time immemorial, material’

progress or technological advance-
ment has resulted in the continual

degredation in the overall. quality of

 

by OMAR-SHARIF MOHAMMED

 

 

a i

 

life for the ordinary individual within
society. One invention which readily
reduced abstract events and human
processes into numbers was the clock.

According to Lewis Mumford, in his
book Technics of Civilization, the
clock was ‘‘a piece of power-machin-
ery whose ‘product’ was seconds and
minutes:,.by its essential nature it
dissociated time from human events
and helped create a belief in an
independent world of mathematically
measurable sequences.’’ The clock
marked .a technical level of perfection
which other machines strove forward
to reach.

Through this mechanical form of
time, ‘‘one could save time or lose
time,’’ by getting a particular task
completed more quickly or less quick-
ly than one anticipated. Here, the unit
of time was separated from the
process that took place within a
certain amount of time. In other
words, objects, and not people, ‘‘con-
ducted’’ their activities in routine and
standardized time frames. Inevitably,
the human processes that occurred in
these time-frames also became stan-
dardized.

Such a factor was well recognized
by the bourgeoise class, which claim-
ed that ‘‘time was money.”
employees to work as ‘‘regular as
clockwork’’ was highly desirable for
the bourgeoise profit motives. In this
same vein, machines acquired ‘‘clock-
like’’ efficiency and, as a result,
skilled labour was not required. A
new class of workers was created, the
semi-skilled machine operator. Here,

’ skilled workers were ‘‘downgraded’’

to a semi-skilled status, while unskill-
ed workers were ‘‘upgraded’’ to semi-
skilled workers.

As a result of this process, the
worker was dissociated from his
products (or work) and in this way,
the worker did not have a large stake
in the workplace. Such a process
reduced the worker to machine-like,

 

clock-timed efficiency and depersonal-
ized the workplace.

Further increases in the time-speed
production process resulted in the
alienation of not only the worker from
his products, but the worker from
other workers. To the bourgeoise, the
worker was merely a part of the
production process: cheap, replace-
able and expendable. The bourgeoise
increased the material comfort of the
upper classes and later the working
classes. Yet, this ‘‘progress’’ was not
sufficient to offset the mental discom-
fort and anxieties which the bourgeoi-
sie was to breed into the future
generations of ordinary people.

For

 

The factory system was the pillar of

bourgeoisie accomplishment. Since
“‘time was money,’’ worker efficiency
was profitability. This was the only
justification that was required to
subject the worker to a three fold
system of factory discipline. The first
was the destruction of skilled workers
(creation of semi-skilled workers). The
second was discipline of starvation
(wages could not cover the costs of
food) and the third was dis-education
(workers were not taught about min-
imally adequate work procedures) and
closed job options (the bourgeoisie
owned the housing sites of the
workers). Since the bourgeoisie has a
monopoly on land which surrounded
the factory sites, the worker was
obliged, if not forced, to maintain his
current job. In addition, the capitalists
(bourgeoisie) found that an efficient
means through which to hold the
worker to his job was through starvat-
ion and educational ignorance.

In these ways, the worker was
bound to his job because he had not
the means (due to ‘‘educational defic-
iency’’) or the stamina (due to starv-
ation) to better his condition.

“This starvation of the senses, this
restriction and depletion of the phys-
ical body, created a race of invalids:
people who knew only of partial
health, partial strength and _ partial
sexual potency,’’ according to Mum-
ford in his book Technics of _Civiliz-
ation.

The invention of the printing press
was another mechanical device of
‘““progress’’ which was responsible for
the degradation and further objectifi-

cation of human experience.

Printing allowed the publication of
thousands of standardized copies of
literature which were widely available
everywhere. This was the first in a
series of changes whereby ordinary
human being’s values became less
important than the printed word.
Today, this can be observed in a
recent psychological finding: when a
law becomes written, people believe
that to act contrary to such a law is
immoral (Gleitman, 1983, Psychol-
ogy].

Printed books were free from ‘‘per-
sonal artifacts’’ or biases left behind
by manuscript copyists. On a symbolic
level, perfection (as in the invention
of the clock) became a_ yardstick

- against which individual books were

judged and ultimately this resulted in
a gradual end of the tolerance of
individual human differences and hu-
man diversity.

Printing also led to changes in
one’s basic thought-patterns. One of
the most paramount changes was the
“silent scanning of print replaced
discourse (speech)’’ (Eisenstein,
Printing as an Agent of Social
Change). This was evident in the
printing of parliamentary debates
which were read by each member
rather than recited from memory.
Such a process would psychologically
“‘divorce’’ the written word from the
speaker and ultimately affect the
relationships among _ parliamentary
members. The mere printing of
poems, plays and songs altered both
composition and singing. The rural
village storyteller was replaced by
a literate reader who read mass
produced books.

photo by Brian Bisset

In these ways, spontaneous creativ-
ity and spontaneous abstract
thoughts, which were characterized
by the speaking tradition, were de-
creasing in their importance to stand-
ardized, readily available mass-
printed materials. In this vein, one
did not need to ‘’reason’’ or solve a
particular problem on his own. One
could merely take for granted the
superiority of the printed word. The
essential argument against creative
thinking was that it was imprecise,
and besides, why should one ‘‘re-
invent the wheel?’

Printing also led to the break down
of social bonds (Durkheim, Suicide)
among individuals within a_ given
community. As a result of printing,
the functions of.thé Sunday sermon
were parcelled out to the various
social institutions (the new arms of
the government). Originally, Sunday
sermons had been mixed with local
and foreign news items, but such an
educative function was taken over by
the newspaper.

As a result, the news stories were
dissociated from their appropriate
cultural context and their community
recognized and sanctioned authority
of the church. In this way, the
newspaper did not provide the easy
and reassuring answers to the comm-
unity that the church was able to
provide.

This resulted in progressive frag-
mentation of the social community
into personalized units of diverse
un-unified ideology. This so called
“‘democratization’’ of the press allow-
ed the erosion of social bonds be-
tween individuals due to the non-

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