George R. Terry (1909–1979)
Source: Principles of Management, 1960, p. 284 (6th ed. 1971)
Quote, c. 1915 in: 'Cubofuturism', Malevich, in Essays on Art, op. cit., vol 2; as quoted in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, pp. 59-60
1910 - 1920
George R. Terry (1909–1979)
Source: Principles of Management, 1960, p. 284 (6th ed. 1971)
Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist
Silence is a Commons (1982)
Context: Machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use.
The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
Context: Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal comparisons seriously does not involve a slick mechanistic or deterministic view of freedom. Animals are not machines; one of my main concerns is to combat this notion. Actually only machines are machines.
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Context: The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natural bodies are; namely, as furnishing experimental data for the ascertaining of principles and examples for their application.<!--p. 176
Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist
Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 114.
Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist
Source: Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (1980), p. 137
Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher
Source: Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (1980), p. 137.
Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)
Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings
Source: The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), p. 16
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works
Source: Letter to his son, Christopher (30 January 1945); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), Letter 96