The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development

by Lewis Mumford and Mumford

Book Overview

Mumford explains the forces that have shaped technology since prehistoric times and shaped the modern world. He shows how tools developed because of significant parallel inventions in ritual,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151639736
• ISBN13: 9780151639731
• Release Date: June 1967
• Publisher: Harcourt
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

vital books

Lewis Mumford was one of the 20th century's most important philosophers, and the two-volume set Myth of the Machine (Volume 1 is Technics and Human Development; and Volume 2 is The Pentagon of Power) are probably his most important books: the summation of his life's work. In writing as elegant as it is clear, Mumford makes plain the death urge that has always underlain civilization, which Mumford calls "the machine," and later "the megamachine." This is a social structure organized not around any organic human needs, but around the "needs" of the machines that have come to characterize and control our lives. These are crucial, incisive, devastating books. I cannot praise them highly enough.

The whole story!

rather than the typical modern myths about mankind and its evolution - evoked by TV-series like "The X-Files" - this great book - as an amazing anthology of the human intellect - shows the "whole truth" ( that is not outhere by the way, but in our brains ) and how much we are going to lose of our human capacilities if we adore the principle of the machine!

This book is an excellent history of language as a tool

This superb book discusses why language was mans most valuable tool ever developed and critiques opinions that say other wise. Enjoy, Mumford was a true geniu