Lapham’s Quarterly

I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?

The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.

Whatever the pace of this technological revolution may be, the direction is clear: the lower rungs of the economic ladder are being lopped off.

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.

Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.

Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.

Industrialism is the religion with “the machine” as the god going to answer all the prayers. Communism and capitalism were just competing sects.

We don’t have the option of turning away from the future. No one gets to vote on whether technology is going to change our lives.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.