Technics and Civilization
Mumford discusses the emergence and impact of the mechanical clock, originating in monasteries, on society's perception of time, organization, and industrialization.
bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.comTechnics and Civilization
Lewis Mumford, in his classic history of technology, Technics and Civilization, reminds us of the social and emotional work of this early clock, keeping a desirable life set apart by spiritual habits that were measured by marking the hours. “Within the walls of the monastery was sanctuary,” he writes. “Under the rule of order surprise and doubt and
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Clocks are the deceptively simple product of an intricate political arrangement. I’d even go so far as to say that politics is the art and science of creating the time machines that we inhabit — the calendars that help us orient and coordinate as we journey from cradle to grave
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Gustavo Simas added
controlling time
The Industrial Revolution is usually attributed to the invention of the steam engine; but as Mumford shows in his 1934 magnum opus, Technics and Civilization, it also probably couldn’t have happened without the clock.
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The Industrial Revolution is usually attributed to the invention of the steam engine; but as Mumford shows in his 1934 magnum opus, Technics and Civilization, it also probably couldn’t have happened without the clock.
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Mumford, who was an expert on cities and architecture, publishing the monumental The City in History in 1961, had a unique insight into the way that technics operated in an urban environment. His essay is concerned with how technical systems, from ancient times to today, have the propensity to enable or resist authoritarianism. As he writes:
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Alex Wittenberg added
Clocks are mechanical media that transform tasks and create new work and wealth by accelerating the pace of human association. By coordinating and accelerating human meetings and goings-on, clocks increase the sheer quantity of human exchange.
Marshall McLuhan, 1961.
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But outsourcing authority to the mechanical clock has severed time from all connection to the body or the season by breaking life into a series of discrete units—the effect of which, writes Mumford, “helped [to] create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.”