“From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and poverty in another; it has harnessed nature to man's basic needs in ways and to extents undreamed - of only a few decades ago, but it has fostered a continuingly lowered "quality of life."”

Source: Organizational cybernetics and human values (1969), p. 7

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and…" by Richard F. Ericson?
Richard F. Ericson photo
Richard F. Ericson 8
American academic 1919–1993

Related quotes

Stanislav Grof photo
Ayn Rand photo
Ivan Illich photo

“Inevitably modern technology has polarized society. It has polluted the environment.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: Inevitably modern technology has polarized society. It has polluted the environment. It has disabled very simple native abilities and made people dependent on objects... Like an automobile which makes the world inaccessible, when actually in Latin "automobile" means "using your feet to get somewhere." The automobile makes it unthinkable. I was recently told, "You're a liar!" when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there.

Jorge Majfud photo

“A society is not defined as developed by the wealth it has but by the poverty it doesn’t have.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Ciencia Política newspaper, Buenos Aires, (2008)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 6, chapter 24.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

Umberto Eco photo
John Horgan (journalist) photo

“This period is characterized by a diversity of textual transmissions undreamed of two decades ago.”

Moshe Goshen-Gottstein (1925–1991) Israeli linguist

Referring to the state of the Bible in Persian times, circa 300BCE.
"Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts" (Biblica, 48 (1967), pp.243-290)

Václav Havel photo

“Justice, like Janus, has two faces, one conservative, the other reformative. These two faces are apparent both in the law and in the thought of social and political ethics.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

" What is Justice? https://books.google.com/books?id=ydBvl65e9qcC&pg=PA1", ch. 1 of Concepts of Justice (Oxford, England; Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 2.

Related topics