Art and Technics
It’s no secret to my friends that I love bookstores (especially used bookstores, and the less organized, the more chaotic, the better). I think of a proper bookstore as a sort of “synchronicity engine”: an environment where things seem to find me, rather than the other way around; a place where I discover that which I didn’t know I was looking for. Here’s an example: A while back I ran across a battered old copy of Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization (1934). While full of thought-provoking concepts (for instance, the idea that the “key-machine” of the Industrial Revolution was not the steam-engine but the clock – information technology!), what I found even more valuable were references to his later (1952) work, Art and Technics (with which, I must confess, I was not familiar). Then, on my next trip to The Last Bookstore, downtown – well, what do you know? – there happened to be a (much-less-battered) copy of Art and Technics waiting for me.
Lewis Mumford was a philosopher of technology (among other things). Interestingly, particularly so for anyone involved with information technology, he was also a friend of Vannevar Bush (not to mention Frank Lloyd Wright).
I find it remarkable how his ideas still resonate, over a half-century later. He was very much concerned with how (or whether) modern humans might achieve a balance between what he described – in mythological terms – as the influence of Prometheus (aspects of human existence driven by technology) as well as Orpheus (aspects of human existence driven by what could be labeled as “art”). Control of the external world, and expression of the internal world: both are necessary for a healthy existence – but in modern times, Mumford asserts, we have fallen out of balance:
“… unable to bring the various parts of … life into harmony, … [we have] traded wholeness … for order, order of a limited, mechanical kind.”
One result of this negotiation is the proliferation, the repetition of symbols and images – and with it a corresponding “terrible … burden: the duty to constantly consume.” And consuming is easy, of course, but the meaning of that which is consumed with such convenience begins to fade. Once symbols become endlessly reproduced they lose their potency. Once a work of art “has reached a certain point of super-saturation … it sinks into the background; indeed, it disappears”
Eventually we reach a place, described by Mumford decades ago in terms that sound very much like our present social media-driven environment:
“… we cease to live in the multidimensional world of reality … we have substituted for this … a secondhand world, a ghost-world, in which everyone lives a secondhand and derivative life. The Greeks had a name for this pallid simulacrum of real existence: the called it Hades, and this kingdom of shadows seems to be the ultimate destination of our mechanistic and mammonistic culture.”
Once, humans experienced the world, and each other, directly – but “now it is actual experience that is rare.”
Mumford’s theories of course referenced the technology of the day: physical machines and mechanical reproduction. What, do you suppose, he would say about the present proliferation of images and media through digital reproduction: incessant reposting, retweeting, reproduction of everything from the sublime to the banal, exponentially, ad infinitum … ?
In 1952 he wrote, “We are rapidly dividing the world into two classes: a minority who act, increasingly, for the benefit of the reproductive process, and a majority whose entire life is spent serving as the passive appreciators or willing victims of this reproductive process.”
Since the 1950s some things have changed. One is that in the present era (i.e., of social media), democratization is found not just in the experience of art and media, but also in the production of the media we consume: now people spend their lives as passive appreciators not only of the actions of a minority (presumably at least somewhat qualified, in Mumford’s day), but as passive appreciators of the contributions of anyone and everyone. It’s doubtful that Mumford would consider this a positive development; rather, I imagine he would see the ubiquitous mobile devices and social media apps as taking the “secondhand world” and the “pallid simulacrum of real existence” to a new level (or, rather, depth).
In the final chapter of Art and Technics, Mumford summarizes the state of the balance (over a half-century ago, but, again, his statements still seem quite valid today): tools and technology, “once so responsive to man’s will … threatens to turn man himself into a mere passive tool.”
In the era of Facebook, one could say we’ve become “tools for consuming,” driven by algorithms based on psychometric calculation.
But then Mumford offers some hope for the future, which may also still be valid:
“…the creative impulses that stirred in the human soul hundreds of thousands of years ago, when man’s inquisitiveness and manipulativeness and growing intelligence and sensitivity caused him to throw off his animal lethargy – these deep impulses will not vanish …”
“… it is in the nature of life itself to seek to resume equilibrium … While life persists, it holds the possibility of circumventing its errors, or surmounting its misfortunes, of renewing its creativity.”
