Twenty-one years have gone by since the passing of Lewis Mumford, but I think of him often, as I see the way that people replace their cell phones like toys for a “more advanced model,” as the “obsolete” computers only a few years old pile up, only to release, like fatal eggs, the phthalates, antimony, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, and other poisons they are made of when they are opened by a child in India or China at an illegal recycling plant. The information revolution has turned into another nightmare of consumerism, and the poor and the planet pay the cost. Personal computers and cell phones are the holy grails of planned obsolescence. The most advanced technology is paired with poor engineering, base advertising, and programmed wastefulness. Dear Mumford, help us to remember your words--your wisdom--so that we can find a way out of this madness!
(Lewis Mumford was a true renaissance man, and I am certainly not attempting to reduce his thought to a critique of consumerism alone. So much of his work concerning literature, urban planning, architecture, the environment; his philosophy of history and his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War, to name but a few of the subjects on which he wrote so powerfully and with such an interdisciplinary depth, are also extremely relevant and necessary for us today. But his discussion of technology, especially in relation to the modern production of consumer goods, really speaks to me these days.)
NB: I write this on a computer that is probably filled with spyware, and I think of how Mumford predicted that computers would inevitably end up spying on us!
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