the smaller the understanding of the situation, the more pretentious, often, the form of expression.

And this leads me to the second thing that occurs to the mind when it is exposed to the word bureaucracy and that is “red tape,” or what in more dignified terms is called “regulations.”

Those who had spent their lives in the nineteenth century had worked with forces large enough to give them a sense for the first time in history that they were in possession of power sufficient to profoundly change the conditions of life. But the forces were never sufficiently developed to fulfill the promise they gave. The two great influences at

This is man’s first encounter outside himself with something that is exactly like some inside part of himself.

The basic elements, the gun, gear, and sight, were put in the environment by other men, men interested in designing machinery to serve different purposes or simply interested in the instruments themselves.

It is possible, for instance, that in any very strict sense there is no such thing as an inventor or an invention. To put it another and slightly more persuasive way, the act of invention may simply be making conscious, explicit, and regular what has been done for a considerable time unconsciously or by accident. Bessemer changed his society by dis

What these officers were saying was that the Wampanoag was a destructive energy in their society. Setting the extraordinary force of her engines against the weight of their way of life, they had a sudden insight into the nature of machinery. They perceived that a machine, any machine, if left to itself, tends to establish its own conditions, to cre

There is another point to be made about “they,” about those who work in the bureaucratic situation. It has to do with the fact that a bureau, whether a great public agency, a department in a university, or a large corporation, tends to become a world for those inside it. With its special duties, its nice categories, its ordered set of rules, its ri

The particular solutions of engineers are on the whole local, limited by time and place and singularity.