Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization is one of those rare, great achievements of academic scholarship. Mumford manages to synthesize approximately 800 years (!!!) of the history of technology while placing forth an argument that remains relevant to today, although the book was initially published in 1934. More impressive still, Mumford’s stylistic choices are on the same calibre as the finest littérateur. His book goes beyond analysis: he’s as strong a wordsmith as he is a historian.

From the first chapter, Mumford braces us with powerful statements that–upon scrutiny–are increasingly difficult to argue against. For example, he tells us that “[t]he clock, not the steam-engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age.” He continues elaborating on the clock with such a remarkable sentence as the following:

In its relationship to determinable quantities of energy, to standardization, to automatic, and finally to its own special product, accurate timing, the clock has been the foremost machine in modern technics: and at each period it has remained in the lead: it marks a perfection toward which other machines aspire.

Mumford’s organization of technological development–to the moment in which he lived–is tripartite. Rather than begin the industrial age with the steam engine, he finds its origin in the thirteenth century with increasing use of wood and glass. The primary power source was water, wind, and wood: things that were (and are) out there, waiting to be used. With these materials, would-be (or perhaps paleo-) scientists made developments in optics, measuring systems, clocks, windmills & watermills, and numerous other innovations that would give humans greater control over production. He terms this period the “eotechnic” (eo- being the Greek prefix to refer to “dawn”; in other words, the dawn of technics).

The eotechnic age was followed by the the paleotechnic age, which we normally call the “industrial” period. The paleotechnic age was defined above all by the use of iron and coal, hard resources that came out of the mines, in order to increase the rate of production. The primary fuel was steam. Most modern factories, as we might recognize them today, are products of the paleotechnic age, although smaller, similar workshops did exist in the eotechnic period.

Finally, the third period is the neotechnic age: the age of light alloys (especially aluminum) and steel, although the primary power source was electricity. Mumford, it seems, believed that Western society was on the cusp of transitioning out of the neotechnic period, although he believed that the technical acceleration his society had undergone would slow down and recalibrate to a new equilibrium.

Looking backwards, we know that this is hardly the case: the fourth period might be called the cybertechnic era. Rather than enter a new age–the age of automation–I suspect that we are still properly in the cybertechnic era. The materials of the age are silicon, lithium, cobalt, and various other rare earth minerals, while it continues to be powered by electricity. Even so, I think that we might make an argument that information flow can also be understood as a power source.

The final three chapters of the book are dedicated to analyses of specific aspects of the current age: compensations, reversions, how we’ve assimilated the machine as part of ourselves, and orientations toward the future. These chapters are especially interesting, as they tell us what all of this history might mean. For one, he points out, “the ideal goal of a completely mechanized and automatized system of power production: the elimination of work: the universal achievement of leisure.”

David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs has been dedicated to this very question, as has been numerous other works. By all accounts, with the amount that productivity has increased (thanks to the machine), we should theoretically have access to nearly total free time to pursue our own interests. What happened?

At the same time, he critiques the way we differentiate between artwork and the machine, although both were created by human hands.

By what inept logic must we bow to our creation if it be a machine, and spurn it as “unreal” if it happens to be a painting or a poem? The machine is just as much a creature of thought as the poem: the poem is as much a fact of reality as the machine. Those who use the machine when they need to react to life directly or employ the humane arts, are as completely lacking in efficiency as if they studied metaphysics in order to learn how to break bread. The question in each case is: what is the appropriate life-raction? How far does this or that instrument further the biological purposes or the ideal ends of life?

This critique goes just as far for technological determinists or techno-utopians today, more than 90 years after the book was published. The machine is one tool among many, and it is not the solution to all of our greatest ills, although it does have its time and place.

Mumford, rightly, I think, sees technology as a potential source of good, but it is as much about how we–humans–harness it as it is about the thing in itself.

The real social distinction of modern technics, however, is that it tends to eliminate social distinctions. Its immediate goal is effective work. Its means are standardization: the emphasis of the generic and the typical: in short, conspicuous economy. Its ultimate aim is leisure–that is, the release of other organic capacities.

The powerful esthetic side of this social process has been obscured by speciously pragmatic and pecuniary interests that have inserted themselves into our technology and have imposed themselves upon its legitimate aims.

Had his book been written today–with terser prose–I would have thought he was speaking to the contest between Andrew Yang’s call for Universal Basic Income against the Tech Barons.

It should be obvious to all of us, but life is not about the sheer accumulation of resources:

By putting business before every other manifestation of life, our mechanical and financial leaders have neglected the chif business of life: namely, growth, reproduction, development, expression. Paying infinite attention to the invention and perfection of incubators, they have forgotten the egg, and its reason for existence.

Mumford concludes his book thinking a bit about the future. As early as the 1930s, it was obvious to him that petroleum and natural gas were at risk of running out. While is skeptical about the possibility of atomic energy (which had not yet been produced) he does point to alternative sources of fuel in the near future–the same sources that we are developing today:

Apart from the doubtful possibility of harnessing inter-atomic energy, there is the much nearer one of utilizing the sun’s energy directly in sun-converters or of utilizing the difference in temperature between the lower depths and the surface of the tropical seas: there is likewise the possibility of applying on a wide scale new types of wind turbine, like the rotor: indeed, once an efficient storage battery was available the wind alone would be sufficient, in all probability, to supply any reasonable needs for energy.

In the final pages of the book, Mumford appears to admire the Soviet Union’s progress, although he doesn’t see it as a serious path further. He is a Communist, although not a Marxist. I suspect that he would fall in the same camp as Milwaukee’s “Sewer Socialists” or the trade unionist movement; rather than seek out a new stage in socioeconomic development, he is pragmatic. He recognizes that all of the ingredients already exist for prosperity, and it should be used to further human interests. I think that he would appreciate the work degrowth thinkers, as well as solarpunk aesthetics, although this may be my reading too far into him.

In conclusion, Mumford’s Technics and Civilization is a must-read for those who are interested in the history of technology. It should be an especially useful wake-up call for techno-utopians who think that the machine should be elevated for its own sake. Unfortunately, I think, techno-utopians are the crowd who are least likely to read it.

If you have the time and are willing to read through Mumford’s dense–but jaw-dropping–prose, this book is an absolute must-read.