I thought of THE SCORE in reading some of Mumford's writing on the quantification obsession: "In time-keeping, in trading, in fighting men counted numbers; and finally only numbers counted." It made me wonder if, in sipping the elixir of datafication and quantification, those concepts performed a sort of *value capture* on those in power and eventually into the broader culture (by force and/or some sort of dazzlement).
Quantification becomes a key value and subsequently guides the way: make number go up, invent more efficient ways to make number go up, etc.
Yes, I think that’s a good connection. The comments on how commodities all get rendered as dollars - and so are treated as interchangeable - play into this. What we measure is what we optimize (so in this case, we optimize for time and money).
I was going to make a comment touching on the same thing, section 4 made me think back to The Score a lot as well. I think this quote from pg 27 is pretty relevant "Indeed, the necessity to promote continual changes and improvements, which has been characteristic of capitalism, introduced an element of instability into technics and kept society from assimilating its mechanical improvements and integrating them in an appropriate social pattern.". This definitely feels like Mumford is lamenting about a captured value on a societal level.
I do wish Mumford explained what he thought this more "appropriate social pattern" would look like though. Its pretty clear he wished these technics were utilized to improve overall social welfare but thoughts from him on what would be required of us/the best way to do so would be really interesting (although not exactly on topic).
A quote from Mumford's The City in History, chillingly prescient:
"Here, with a heightened consciousness of our past and a clearer insight into decisions made long ago, which often still control us, we shall be able to face the immediate decision that now confronts man and will, one way or another, transform him: namely, whether he shall devote himself to the development of his own deepest humanity, or whether he shall surrender himself to the now almost automatic forces he himself has set in motion and yield place to his dehumanized alter ego, 'Post-historic Man.' That second choice will bring with it a progressive loss of feeling, emotion, creative audacity, and finally consciousness."
I'm finding his thesis plausible, but I'm not seeing a lot of evidence to support it. I read an interesting book recently entitled The Logic of Real Arguments by Alex Fisher. He talks about the Assertability Question "What argument or evidence would justify me asserting the conclusion?" I found myself often wondering about this while reading the first couple of chapters.
Is his view of the evolution of technics and civilization widely accepted by historians of technology? Is it true that clocks are considered the first machines, and that they evolved in monasteries?
I probably could research this myself, but I'm lazy.
As someone who doubled in history and sociology with a specific interest in technology, I can also confirm some of Jared's insight here.
Mumford is really building on top of sociological work done by Weber on bureacracy and capitalism coming out of the Protestant Reformation but going back further, so his arguments are more in conversation with that. Folks back in his era were very interested in building out these kinds of progressive historical narratives that events have a forward momentum of their own in a particular direction towards always bettering humanity and loved dividing history into clear stages of progress where the present was always the best version of the world, which now historians consider an outmoded way of thinking about it. It demanded often that historians really distort the Middle Ages in particular and basically write out all non-Western developments going on in the world between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. So his arguments about clocks are oversimple and his over-emphasis on monasteries belongs to a tradition of thinking that Middle Ages historians loathe today.
However, I've also definitely encountered strong arguments from sociologists still going on with regards to the shift that emerged with automated time-keeping and what Nguyen basically ID'd as value capture. It is true, for example, that the introduction of not only clocks but also electricity (specifically electric light) transformed human notions of time and the rhythm of human life - people's circadian rhythm - attaching it something measurable and concrete that they could begin to value differently. It's also true that without a sociological concept of time as something mathematical and measurable, much of our other modern technological progress would be impossible because time in that understanding of it is hugely central to the entire field of scientific management of labour, which is a relatively new development in human history. Today we anchor work and productivity to time, which did not use to be the case. What was interesting to me about Mumford's assertions about clocks was less whether his historical understanding was true and more about the way it asks you to perhaps imagine an alternative world in which other technological developments achieved were - as they are now - choices humans made and not inevitable, because if you try to imagine a world without clocks today or without that particular conception of time compared to our ancestors, you begin to see how much we take it for granted and how totally transformative it actually was.
I've done some light investigation into this. We're dealing with a couple of issues, and it is helpful to separate them.
First, the question of historical accuracy. My rough impression is that the field of the history of technology has largely moved on from Mumford's specific analysis, but that he remains influential for the questions he asked. I found some books (unfortunately all paywalled/very expensive) that try to give more thorough histories of time-keeping; nearly all of them are arguing against Mumford in some way.
Second, the question of whether or not Mumford's evidence supports his conclusion. If we grant him his evidence for now, I think he holds up fairly well! I understand his conclusion (so far) to be that prior to the Industrial Revolution, we had already moved to more abstract/rationalistic conceptions of key concepts, and that this facilitated the rise of 'technological complex', as we were already mentally thinking in machine-friendly terms. But then we have to go back and look at all of the history to see if this argument is found.
I found this critical review, which I'd like to read but can't access. I'm going to ask around to see if I can get a PDF from someone with university library access: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/33894/pdf
I've been really enjoying this book so far, Mumford just casually drops some bangers that tickle my brain when making his arguments and conveying complex ideas. A personal favorite so far is pg 43 - "Each element in life forms part of a cultural mesh: one part implicates, restrains, helps to express the other. During this period the mesh was broken, and a fragment escaped and launched itself on a separate career---the will to dominate the environment." which is a pleasing visual image of the point he is making here.
I particular enjoyed section 7 (The road through magic) in this chapter. The closing line being yet another banger and I think something worth milling over. Starting on pg 40 "The subjective confidences of the magicians, seeking to inflate their private egos with boundless wealth and mysterious energies, surmounted even their practical failures: their fiery hopes, their crazy dreams, their cracked homunculi continued to gleam in the ashes: to have dreamed so riotously was to make the technics that followed less incredible and hence less impossible". Borderline poetry but also argumentative its awesome. I think the questions for me here are "Do we really need truly outlandish ideas in order to make progress feasible? When will it be best to curb these desires that cause great change and will we know when its best to do so?"
Mumford is pointing to how magic was the manifestation of our desire for power, which also advanced technology and brought great change. Since power seems to be to tightly wielded now I think what's the only driving desire truly left for us is our desire for eternity (think post-humanism ideas from AI execs, the crazed health pursuit of Bryan Johnson). To me its seems like this will most likely be our driving desire that will influence unintended areas of our lives for a good amount of time.
I also find Lewis Mumford just really readable and sometimes he phrases something in a way that delights me.
This one on p. 53 killed me: "people agreed that inventions were good, whether or not they actually provided benefits, just as they agreed that child-bearing was good, whether the offspring proved a blessing to society or a nuisance."
And then I love, for on p. 54 where he writes: "Technics had seized the imagination: the engines themselves and the goods they produced both seemed immediately desirable. While much good came through invention, much invention came irrespective of the good."
In addition to being really witty, these statements are both also tremendously prescient: we live in a world today where technological progress is also obviously being argued as being necessary for its own sake irrespective of the impacts or whether it genuinely betters humanity or makes it worse. And where the same people obsessed with technology are also bizarrely obsessed with birth-rates. :S
Along with what others have said about *The Score*, I'm currently reading Iain McGilchrist's *The Matter with Things* at the moment and, while I'm still in the Introduction, it's quite easy to see the connections with what he's saying. Especially about the focusing in on numbers and the details (which he attributes to the left hemisphere) and that taking over our lives. It'll be really interesting to see McGilchrist develop this, and it doesn't seem like he has any references to Mumford.
I thought of THE SCORE in reading some of Mumford's writing on the quantification obsession: "In time-keeping, in trading, in fighting men counted numbers; and finally only numbers counted." It made me wonder if, in sipping the elixir of datafication and quantification, those concepts performed a sort of *value capture* on those in power and eventually into the broader culture (by force and/or some sort of dazzlement).
Quantification becomes a key value and subsequently guides the way: make number go up, invent more efficient ways to make number go up, etc.
Yes, I think that’s a good connection. The comments on how commodities all get rendered as dollars - and so are treated as interchangeable - play into this. What we measure is what we optimize (so in this case, we optimize for time and money).
I was going to make a comment touching on the same thing, section 4 made me think back to The Score a lot as well. I think this quote from pg 27 is pretty relevant "Indeed, the necessity to promote continual changes and improvements, which has been characteristic of capitalism, introduced an element of instability into technics and kept society from assimilating its mechanical improvements and integrating them in an appropriate social pattern.". This definitely feels like Mumford is lamenting about a captured value on a societal level.
I do wish Mumford explained what he thought this more "appropriate social pattern" would look like though. Its pretty clear he wished these technics were utilized to improve overall social welfare but thoughts from him on what would be required of us/the best way to do so would be really interesting (although not exactly on topic).
A quote from Mumford's The City in History, chillingly prescient:
"Here, with a heightened consciousness of our past and a clearer insight into decisions made long ago, which often still control us, we shall be able to face the immediate decision that now confronts man and will, one way or another, transform him: namely, whether he shall devote himself to the development of his own deepest humanity, or whether he shall surrender himself to the now almost automatic forces he himself has set in motion and yield place to his dehumanized alter ego, 'Post-historic Man.' That second choice will bring with it a progressive loss of feeling, emotion, creative audacity, and finally consciousness."
Oof!
I'm finding his thesis plausible, but I'm not seeing a lot of evidence to support it. I read an interesting book recently entitled The Logic of Real Arguments by Alex Fisher. He talks about the Assertability Question "What argument or evidence would justify me asserting the conclusion?" I found myself often wondering about this while reading the first couple of chapters.
Is his view of the evolution of technics and civilization widely accepted by historians of technology? Is it true that clocks are considered the first machines, and that they evolved in monasteries?
I probably could research this myself, but I'm lazy.
As someone who doubled in history and sociology with a specific interest in technology, I can also confirm some of Jared's insight here.
Mumford is really building on top of sociological work done by Weber on bureacracy and capitalism coming out of the Protestant Reformation but going back further, so his arguments are more in conversation with that. Folks back in his era were very interested in building out these kinds of progressive historical narratives that events have a forward momentum of their own in a particular direction towards always bettering humanity and loved dividing history into clear stages of progress where the present was always the best version of the world, which now historians consider an outmoded way of thinking about it. It demanded often that historians really distort the Middle Ages in particular and basically write out all non-Western developments going on in the world between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. So his arguments about clocks are oversimple and his over-emphasis on monasteries belongs to a tradition of thinking that Middle Ages historians loathe today.
However, I've also definitely encountered strong arguments from sociologists still going on with regards to the shift that emerged with automated time-keeping and what Nguyen basically ID'd as value capture. It is true, for example, that the introduction of not only clocks but also electricity (specifically electric light) transformed human notions of time and the rhythm of human life - people's circadian rhythm - attaching it something measurable and concrete that they could begin to value differently. It's also true that without a sociological concept of time as something mathematical and measurable, much of our other modern technological progress would be impossible because time in that understanding of it is hugely central to the entire field of scientific management of labour, which is a relatively new development in human history. Today we anchor work and productivity to time, which did not use to be the case. What was interesting to me about Mumford's assertions about clocks was less whether his historical understanding was true and more about the way it asks you to perhaps imagine an alternative world in which other technological developments achieved were - as they are now - choices humans made and not inevitable, because if you try to imagine a world without clocks today or without that particular conception of time compared to our ancestors, you begin to see how much we take it for granted and how totally transformative it actually was.
I've done some light investigation into this. We're dealing with a couple of issues, and it is helpful to separate them.
First, the question of historical accuracy. My rough impression is that the field of the history of technology has largely moved on from Mumford's specific analysis, but that he remains influential for the questions he asked. I found some books (unfortunately all paywalled/very expensive) that try to give more thorough histories of time-keeping; nearly all of them are arguing against Mumford in some way.
Second, the question of whether or not Mumford's evidence supports his conclusion. If we grant him his evidence for now, I think he holds up fairly well! I understand his conclusion (so far) to be that prior to the Industrial Revolution, we had already moved to more abstract/rationalistic conceptions of key concepts, and that this facilitated the rise of 'technological complex', as we were already mentally thinking in machine-friendly terms. But then we have to go back and look at all of the history to see if this argument is found.
I found this critical review, which I'd like to read but can't access. I'm going to ask around to see if I can get a PDF from someone with university library access: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/33894/pdf
I was able to grab it and can send it to you if you like. :)
I've been really enjoying this book so far, Mumford just casually drops some bangers that tickle my brain when making his arguments and conveying complex ideas. A personal favorite so far is pg 43 - "Each element in life forms part of a cultural mesh: one part implicates, restrains, helps to express the other. During this period the mesh was broken, and a fragment escaped and launched itself on a separate career---the will to dominate the environment." which is a pleasing visual image of the point he is making here.
I particular enjoyed section 7 (The road through magic) in this chapter. The closing line being yet another banger and I think something worth milling over. Starting on pg 40 "The subjective confidences of the magicians, seeking to inflate their private egos with boundless wealth and mysterious energies, surmounted even their practical failures: their fiery hopes, their crazy dreams, their cracked homunculi continued to gleam in the ashes: to have dreamed so riotously was to make the technics that followed less incredible and hence less impossible". Borderline poetry but also argumentative its awesome. I think the questions for me here are "Do we really need truly outlandish ideas in order to make progress feasible? When will it be best to curb these desires that cause great change and will we know when its best to do so?"
Mumford is pointing to how magic was the manifestation of our desire for power, which also advanced technology and brought great change. Since power seems to be to tightly wielded now I think what's the only driving desire truly left for us is our desire for eternity (think post-humanism ideas from AI execs, the crazed health pursuit of Bryan Johnson). To me its seems like this will most likely be our driving desire that will influence unintended areas of our lives for a good amount of time.
I also find Lewis Mumford just really readable and sometimes he phrases something in a way that delights me.
This one on p. 53 killed me: "people agreed that inventions were good, whether or not they actually provided benefits, just as they agreed that child-bearing was good, whether the offspring proved a blessing to society or a nuisance."
And then I love, for on p. 54 where he writes: "Technics had seized the imagination: the engines themselves and the goods they produced both seemed immediately desirable. While much good came through invention, much invention came irrespective of the good."
In addition to being really witty, these statements are both also tremendously prescient: we live in a world today where technological progress is also obviously being argued as being necessary for its own sake irrespective of the impacts or whether it genuinely betters humanity or makes it worse. And where the same people obsessed with technology are also bizarrely obsessed with birth-rates. :S
Along with what others have said about *The Score*, I'm currently reading Iain McGilchrist's *The Matter with Things* at the moment and, while I'm still in the Introduction, it's quite easy to see the connections with what he's saying. Especially about the focusing in on numbers and the details (which he attributes to the left hemisphere) and that taking over our lives. It'll be really interesting to see McGilchrist develop this, and it doesn't seem like he has any references to Mumford.
Flagging a connection: Mumford's "technological complex" and Taylor's "iron cage".