Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Automation: Friend, Not Foe

"Everybody's heard of Frankenstein and his monster. Just as many have heard of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. Ordinarily one would not think of linking them together. But about the time Mary Shelley wrote the story of the monster rebelling against his master, the inventor of the cotton gin was perfecting his principle of interchangeable parts in the production of a shipment of Army muskets. With his revolutionary new principle of interchangeable parts Eli Whitney made possible the modern methods of mass production. But man's mind is less intrigued by fact than by fancy. He sees a new machine doing the work of 100 men and, seeing it, assumes the machine will forever take away the jobs of 100 men. His imgaination links Frankenstein's monster and the modern version of mass production known as automation." 

Good Reading Rack Service, 1955

No comments:

Post a Comment