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"Too dull to think, people might read: too
tired to read, they might look at the moving
pictures: unable to visit the picture theatre
they might turn on the radio: in any case, they
might avoid the call to action: surrogate
lovers, surrogate heroes and heroines,
surrogate wealth filled their debilitated and
impoverished lives and carried the perfume
of unreality into their dwellings. And as the
machine itself became, as it were, more active
and human, reproducing the organic
properties of eye and ear, the human beings
who employed the machine as a mode of
escape have tended to become more passive
and mechanical. Unsure of their own voices,
unable to hold a tune, they carry a
phonograph or a radio set with them even on
a picnic: afraid to be alone with their own
thoughts, afraid to confront the blankness
and inertia of their own minds, they turn on
the radio and eat and talk and sleep to the
accompaniment of a continuous stimulus
from the outside world: now a band, now a bit
of propaganda, now a piece of public gossip
called news."
Lewis Mumford, 1934 Technics and Civilization pp 315-316 |
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