A machine to bond with
Monday, April 21st, 2008From Stanley Crawford, Petroleum Man (2005):
As for everything else, I throw my hands up in despair. Dierdre simply does not understand that in a world in which things are accorded their proper respect, people will be forced to simplify their innate complexity and focus much more steadily on the needs and demands of things and machines, a useful discipline and therefore a force for public good. It is for excellent reasons that mankind has begun to achieve a world in which more and more messy, complex people are attached to this or that machine and required to behave accordingly by pushing buttons, moving mice, pushing pedals and levers, turning wheels, and switching on and off switches of various kinds. You may now and then see on TV crowds of people rampaging through streets and overturning cars and smashing windows, for which there is a simple explanation: these are people who have failed to find a machine to bond with and who are therefore expressing their resentment against all of the rest of us who have.
