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The Technological Society and British Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

IN THEIR ANALYSES OF TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND THE TECHNOlogical state contemporary Western writers reveal a wide spectrum of opinions, and this article must evidently consider some at least of these, though unfortunately none at great length. First, the anguish of Arendt:

The question therefore is not so much whether we are the masters or the slaves of our machines, but whether machines still serve the world and its things, or if, on the contrary, they and the automatic motion of their processes have begun to rule and even destroy world and things.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1972

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References

1 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968, p. 151.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 228, 321.

3 Ibid., p. 322.

4 Ibid., p. 4.

5 Ibid., p. 324.

6 See Manfred Stanley, Dept. of Sociology, Syracuse University, N.Y., ‘Technicism: The Modern Demonology’, paper presented to the 7th World Congress of the International Sociological Association.

7 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 273.

8 Marcuse, Herbert, One‐Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society, London, Sphere Books, 1968, p. II.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 19, 13.

10 Marcuse, Herbert, ‘Repressive Tolerance’, in Barrington Moore, Robert Paul Jr, and Marcuse, Herbert, A Critiqtre of Pure Tolerance, London, Jonathan Cape, 1969.Google Scholar

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12 This seems fair even bearing in mind his more recent work, but see Ellul, Jacques, ‘Technique, Institutions and Awareness’, American Behavioural Scientist, XI, 6, 0708 1968, pp. 3842.Google Scholar

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14 Ibid., pp. 263, 279, 275.

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20 Ibid., pp. 243, 247–8, 337.

21 Ibid., p. 378.

22 See, for example, Silberman, Charles E., The Myths of Automation, New York, Harper & Row, 1966,Google Scholar chap. 6. ‘Is Technology Taking Over?’

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27 Ibid., p. 399.

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29 Ibid., p. 267.

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32 Ibid., p. 300.

33 Ibid., pp. 350, 357, 369.

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40 Ibid., p. 273.

41 Ibid., pp. 272, 276.

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46 Ibid., p. 56.

47 Ibid., Chap. ii and pp. 170, 189, cf. Segal, Ronald, America's Receding Future, London, Meidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.Google Scholar

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54 Ibid., p. 26.

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57 Bell, Daniel, ‘Notes on the Post‐Industrial Society (I)’, The Public Interest, No. 6, Winter 1967, p. 25.Google Scholar (This is another version of the above.)

58 Kumar has made a shrewd comment on this. The ideology of futurology, he points out, ‘is being created by the very groups who are said by the ideology to be on the way to becoming the most powerful and influential in the post‐industrial society’. ‘My feeling’, he adds, ‘is that the futurologists underestimate the irrationality of political motivations, and may find themselves displaced with scant respect for their supposed indispensability.’ Krishan Kumar, ‘Futurology’, The Listener, 18 February 1971, p. 207.

In The Reforming of General Education (New York: Columbia U.P., 1966) Bell itemizes four problems which he says the university must overcome before it can successfully fulfil its central role in the post‐industrial society. The third and fourth of these problems are coming to terms with its function as a political institution, and removing the disjunction between culture and social structure, ‘a disjunction expressed most directly in the two major orientations towards the future that divide the intelligentsia today—the technocratic and the apocalyptic’ (PP. 303–12).

59 Scientific Progress and Human Values, p. 168.

60 Bell, Daniel, ‘The Commission on the Year 2000’, Futures II, 3 (09 1970), pp. 263–9Google Scholar (foreword to first of a series of volumes, this one being U.S. Government in Year 2000, ed. Harvey Perloff).

61 Scientific Progress and Human Valaes, p. 168.

62 Bell, Daniel, ‘Notes, etc. (2)’, The Public Interest, No. 7, Spring 1967, p. 105.Google Scholar

63 Cf. Diebold, John, ‘Goals to Match our Means’, in Dechert, Charles R. (ed.), The Social Impact of Cybernetics, Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1966, p. 9.Google Scholar

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65 Ibid., Chap. 7, ‘Technology and the Rediscovery of Politics’.

66 Neumann, Franz L., ‘Approaches to the Study of Political Power’, Political Science Quarterly, lxv, 1950, p. 170, quoted at p. 157.Google Scholar

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68 Ibid., p. 184.

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71 Ibid.

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76 Ibid., p. 424.

77 For his earlier ideas see Schon, Donald A., Technology and Change: The New Heraclitus, New York, Delacorte Press, 1967 Google Scholar. The Reith Lectures, ‘Change and Industrial Society’, were printed in The Listener, lxxxiv, 2173–8, 19 November‐24 December 1970.

78 Ibid., p. 875 (6th Lecture).

79 Ibid:‘In eras of stability, the roles that come into prominence…are the stable roles at the centre organizations. In our time the roles that became critical are the network roles.’

80 Ibid., p. 810 (4th lecture). See also The Times, editorial, 21 December 1970.

81 Bennis, Warren G. and Slater, Philip E., The Temporary Society, New York, Harper & Row, 1968, Chap. I, p. 13.Google Scholar

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85 Ibid., p. 606.

86 Ibid., p. 673.

87 Ibid., p. 677.

88 Mumford, Lewis Technics and Civilisation, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967, p. 109.Google Scholar Mumford's is an ‘evolutionary’ theory, like those of Marx and Rostow, rather than a ‘cyclical’ theory, such as those put forward by Spengler or Toynbee.

89 Ibid., pp. 213, 216.

90 Ibid., pp. 403–6.

91 Cf. Kostelanetz, Richard Beyond Left and liight: Radical Thought for our Times, New York, William Morrow, 1968, p. xi.Google Scholar

92 Buckminster Fuller, R. Utopia or Oblivion, London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1970, p. 324.Google Scholar

93 Ibid., pp. 391, 235.

94 Ibid., p. 335.

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98 Ibid., p. 57.

99 Miller, Jonathan, McLuhan, London, Fontana/Collins, 1971, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar Cf. Finkelstein, Sidney, Sense and Nonsense of McLuhan, New York, International Publishers, 1968, p. 117:Google Scholar McLuhan's ‘vision of an electronic, automated, computerised dictatorship controlling the population by beaming radio and TV waves at them is presented tongue in cheek, as a sick joke’. Elsewhere he comments that what McLuhan calls ‘involvement’ is in fact ‘brainless’ (p. 100).

100 Easton, David, ‘The New Revolution in Political Science’, American Political Science Review, lxiii, 4 12 1969, 1058.Google Scholar

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103 Some of the better‐known works are Baier, Kurt and Rescher, Nicholas (eds.), Values and the Future, New York, The Free Press, 1969;Google Scholar Jungk, Robert and Galtung, Johan (eds.), Mankind 2000, London, Allen & Unwin, 1969;Google Scholar ‘Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress’, Daedalus, Summer 1967. There are several other books with ‘the year 2000’ in their title. Erich Jantsch, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, Paris, OECD, 1967, provides a good annotated bibliography of the forecasting field as it stood at that time. One particularly worthwhile book (still) seems to be Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1964. Also from Britain has now come Michael Young (ed.), Forecasting and the Social Sciences, London, Heinemann, 1968, a collection of papers for the SSRC's Committee on the Next Thirty Years. The latter is a partial equivalent of de Jouvenel's Futuribles project or the American Commission on the Year 2000. To confirm that we‐have‐been‐there‐before, there is Armytage, W. H. G., Yesterday's Tomowows: A Historical Survey of Future Societies, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.Google Scholar

104 de Jouvenel, Bertrand, The Art of Conjecture, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967, p. 238 Google Scholar: ‘a political forecast is not given to us as a bonus once we have completed an economic and social forecast.…’

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109 Ibid., p. 25.

110 From Kahn & Wiener, The Year 2000, p. 25.

111 Lewis A. Gunn, ‘Government, Technology and Planning’, to be published in 1971 as a chapter in J. N. Wolfe (ed.), The Impact of Technology.

112 Editorial, Observer, 27 November 1966.

113 Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Minister of Technology (Mintech) at the beginning of 1967, New Technology, No. I, January 1967.

114 William Plowden, ‘Mintech Moves On’, New Society, 12 January 1967.

115 Times Business News editorial, ‘Galbraith Builds His House’, 4 September 1967; Guardian editorial, ‘Bureaucrats and Businessmen’, 19 December 1966.

116 See for instance ‘White‐Hot Revolution?’, five articles in New Scientist, 26 September 1968, pp. 644–53.

117 Gunn, in The Impact of Technology, op. cit.

118 Anthony Wedgwood Benn, ‘Science, Europe and a New World’, New Scientist and science Journal, 18 February 1971, pp. 348–50.

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120 Harold Wilson, Guildhall speech, as reported in The Times, 14 November 1967. On the ‘European technological imperatives’ see the review article by Miller, Linda B., Europe's Futures: Change and Continuity?,’ Journal of Common Market Studies, IX, I 09 1970 Google Scholar, esp. part ii, ‘Science and the State’, pp. 103–8.

121 Goldring, Mary, ‘The Atomic Incubus’, New Society, 28 10 1965 , PP. 79.Google Scholar

122 John Maddox, ‘The Atomic Future’, Guardian, 16 April 1964.

123 ‘Is I.C.L. in Trouble?’, The Economist, Business Brief, 27 February 1971, PP. 56–7

124 Shirley Williams, M.P., ‘The Responsibility of Science’, The Times, Saturday Review, 27 February 1971. She concludes: ‘We need new machinery quickly if we are to use science more wisely than we have done up to now.’

125 Edward Heath, speech to Institute of Directors' Conference, reported in Financial Times, 6 November 1970.

126 As reported in The Times, 16 March 1971, Ford of Britain had at the time a major industrial dispute on their hands.

127 Report of the Committee on the Civil Service, London, HMSO, 1968, Cmnd. 3638, Vol. I, paras. 30–1, p. 16. In this context one should also note the establishment by the 1970 conservative government of a Central Policy Review Staff headed by Lord Rothschild—‘the Cabinet office “think‐tank”’ in the words of the Guardian, 7 November 1970. editorial.

128 Royal Commission on Local Government in England 1966–69, Vol. I, Report, London, HMSO, 1969, Cmnd. 4040, para. 488, p. 125.

129 Sir Solly retired from his official responsibilities in March 1971.

130 Harold Jackson, ‘A Man for all Sciences’, Guardian, 7 April 1967.

131 Vig, Norman J. Science and Technology in British Politics, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1968, p. 161.Google Scholar

132 Crick, Bernard The Reform of Parliament, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968, PP. 2, 245.Google Scholar

133 Anthony Wedgwood Benn, writing in The Sundy Times, 28 February 1971, p. 12.

134 Warner, Malcolm and Stone, Michael, The Data Bank Society, London, Allen & Unwin, 1970;Google Scholar Thompson, Anthony A., Big Brother in Britain Today, London, Michael Joseph, 1970.Google Scholar