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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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References
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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).
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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.’
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89 Ibid., pp. 213, 216.
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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.
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