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Doubts about the effects of technical development on modern society were expressed by Lewis Mumford, an American architectural critic and historian of science. In "Technics and Civilization" (1934) Mumford introduced the distinction between Polytechnic, which enlists many different modes of technology, thereby providing a complex framework for solving human problems, and Monotechnic, which is based on a single mode of technology, thereby obliging humanity to follow that single technology's own oppressive trajectory. Mumford for example saw America's transportation networks as being monotechnic in their over-reliance on automobile transportation, neglecting other transport modes such walking, bicycling and public transit, and causing thousands of maimed and dead each year as a result of automobile accidents.

In 1967 appeared Lewis Mumford's "The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development," in which he deepened his earlier critique of modern technology. Mumford observed that the industrial production of consumer products relies on mechanisms such as consumer credit, built-in fragility, and superficial "fashion" changes, to ensure constant production and replacement of products. This goal of rapid product replacement works against technical perfection, product durability, social efficiency, and overall human satisfaction. Mumford wrote:

:Without constant enticement by advertising, production would slow down and level off to normal replacement demand. Otherwise many products could reach a plateau of efficient design which would call for only minimal changes from year to year.

==References==
*Lewis Mumford, "Technics and Civilization" (1934)
*Lewis Mumford, "The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development" (1967)

==Links==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford

[[Category:Historical Roots]]