“It is impossible today to escape the need for a general awareness of the phasing of the historical process. In the past great cultures could be created unconsciously, the organic processes forming the new patterns without man's attention being drawn to their wider significance. But the unconscious phase of history is now past. The acceleration of social change which has resulted from the attention paid to specialized techniques can only be controlled by paying attention also to the general formative processes which in earlier times were unconscious. Consciousness of specialized technical methods must be balanced by consciousness of general developing forms.”

— Lancelot Law Whyte

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 167

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Lancelot Law Whyte 62

Scottish industrial engineer 1896–1972

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Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 203

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Context: Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process. Why does thought require attention? Every thinking requires attention, really. If we ran machines withinout paying attention to them, they would break down. Our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise its going to go wrong.

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Source: Is human information processing conscious?, 1991, p. 665; As cited in: Giorgio Marchetti, " Against the view that consciousness and attention are fully dissociable https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279725/." Attention and consciousness in different senses (2011): 23.

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