#lewis mumford

[anarchistin]

If the goal of human history is a uniform type of man, reproducing at a uniform rate, in a uniform environment, kept at a constant temperature, pressure and humidity, like a uniformly lifeless existence, with his uniform physical needs satisfied by uniform goods… most of the problems of human development would disappear.

Only one problem would remain: why should anyone, even a computer, bother to keep this kind of creature alive?

— Lewis Mumford

#lewis mumford #technology #dystopia #fascism #quote

[comparativetarot]

Eight of Chalices. Art by Suzanne Treister, from HEXEN 2.0.

Lewis Mumford

#Suzanne Treister #HEXEN 2.0 #Eight of Cups #Eight #Cups #Minor Arcana #Tarot #Lewis Mumford

[lewis-mumfords-ghost]

What in particular do you like about "the city in history"? I'm currently reading through it and wanted to get your perspective on it.

Honestly so much, it was one of my first introductions to the philosophy of cities, so that's a personal attachment to it. More generally though (and just fyi I haven't read it super recently (I'm currently reading Murphy bookchin's writings on cities through a anarcho-marxist lens and honestly cannot recommend his work enough)) I love the language he uses, I love his usage of romantic language that for me at least makes the past feel like it's leaping from the pages.

Like I'll be the first to say I don't agree with all his points, it is a big book after all, and some of the views on gender he expressed when talking about prehistoric villages rubbed me a bit weird (I give him a bit of leverage though given the book is like 60 years old now and he was that old when it was written).

I honestly find myself agreeing with more of his points than I disagree with though, he opened my eyes to just how much the capitalist market place has infected our cities and I dislike the way America has built postwar suburbs as socially and financially isolating.

Honestly I'd have to go check my notes in the book to go more in depth (which is split between two copies of it because I initially picked a paperback copy from a secondhand shop and then wore through it badly enough that my partner bought me a nice hardback version, lol) but if you're interested in talking about it more, I absolutely am willing to.

#ask #tsunderebot #lewis mumford #the city in history #urban planning

[ultraozzie3000]

House & Home

The New Yorker’s art and architectural critic Lewis Mumford found much to dislike about urban life, from pretentious ornamentation to the gigantic scale of skyscrapers popping up all over Manhattan. Technology and progress were fine, but when coupled with unbridled capitalism, Mumford believed they created inhuman environments in which the average citizen struggled to survive, let alone…

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#Carol Aronovici #Constantin Alajalov #Garrett Price #George Price #James Thurber #Lewis Mumford #Lyse Darcy #Mimi Richardson #Peter Arno #Richard Decker #William Steig #Xenia Georgievna

[jameshorrox]

Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: Technics & Human Development (1967)

#Lewis Mumford #technology #nature #ai #industrialization #environment #dystopia

[gabrielkahane]

"Few devices have done more to obscure the efforts of human labor than the smartphone. Fewer still have vacuumed out of our lives as much human interaction as has been lost to our oblong, digital assistants.” 

Please subscribe to my newsletter, which now mostly replaces traditional social media activity.

#brian wilson #music theory #jaron lanier #shoshana zuboff #smartphones #capitalism #socialism #lewis mumford #beavis and butthead

[literaturha]

The essential physical means of a city's existence are the fixed site, the durable shelter, the permanent facilities for assembly, interchange, and storage; the essential social means are the social division of labor, which serves not merely the economic life but the cultural process. The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity. The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It is in the city, the city as theater, that man's (sic) more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and co-operating personalities, events, groups into more significant culminations.

Lewis Mumford, What is a City?

#curbside quotidian #art #lit #quote #lewis mumford #city #artblr #art blog #bookblr #book blog #langblr #litblr #lit blog #studyblr #writeblr

[poligraf]

The aggregation of the spiritual life from the practical life is a curse that falls impartially upon both sides of our existence. A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility.

— Lewis Mumford

#life quotes #lifequotes #light #quote #quote of the day #quoteoftheday #quotes #wisdom #Lewis Mumford #division #separation #aggregation #spiritual life #practical life #mundane life #curse #existence #spiritual dimension #physical dimension #society #socio-economic organization #organization of society #order #social classes #opportunity #leisure #work #labour #burden #sterility

[aneverendinghorrorshow]

All through history, man has been both instructed and frightened by his dreams. And he has good reason for both reactions: his inner world must often have been far more threatening and far less comprehensible than his outer world, as indeed it still is; and his first task was not to shape tools for controlling the environment, but to shape instruments even more powerful and compelling in order to control himself, above all, his unconscious. The invention and perfection of these instruments -- rituals, symbols, words, images, standard modes of behavior -- was, I hope to establish, the principal occupation of early man, more necessary to survival than tool-making, and far more essential to his later development.

--Lewis Mumford, Technics and Human Development

#lewis mumford #myth of the machine #technics and human development

[starsbitchonus]

Why have we become like gods as technologists and like devils as moral beings, supermen in science and idiots in aesthetics -- idiots above all in the Greek sense of absolutely isolated individuals, incapable of communicating among themselves or understanding one another?

#lewis mumford #commonplace book

[human-leather-hat-appreciator]

Capitalism in its effects upon cities, is like that aberration of human physiology know to human medicine as the stomach that digests itself - Lewis Mumford

#city planning #anticapitalism #quotes #lewis Mumford

[lilyflanders]

not me 2/3 way through the second volume of "myth of the machine" by lewis mumford learning that georgia o keefe's paintings were not meant to be pussy and this misinterpretation of her work was apparently started by lewis mumford ! ! ! in 1925 he went to her show, saw some flowers, wrote a review about how much sex the paintings contained, then walked back a bit with an admission that perhaps half of the sex is due to his own imagination. lewis bitch you look so fucking stupid. how am i gonna finish reading your fucking book. i get it, oil paint excites me as well, but you made a PAINTER grumpy and i ve just developed a phantom guild loyalty, bitch!

#the myth of the machine #lewis mumford #georgia o'keeffe #too bad his horny! at an art show moment got to have such lasting power

[inntervalspauline]

"The city as theatre of social action"

#Lewis Mumford #AKT - Balkensturz #Christoph Schlingensief - Ausländer raus! #columbosnext - Satellit

[elegantzombielite]

"A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail."

Lewis Mumford, writer and philosopher (19 October 1895-1990)

#athoughtfortoday #lewis mumford #courage

[ultraozzie3000]

Music in the Air

Above: The Cat and the Fiddle (Pete Gordon) and Mickey Mouse (a monkey in a very creepy costume) were featured in 1934's Babes In Toyland. We close out the old year and ring in the new with a bit of song and dance from three musicals that entertained New Yorkers in the waning days of 1934. Dec. 22, 1934 cover by Arnold Hall. The work of composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II were…

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#Alfred Stieglitz #Arnold Hall #Babes in Toyland 1934 #Barbara Hutton #Barbara Shermund #Buck Rogers #Carl Rose #Daniel &039;Alain&039; Brustlein #Dionne Quintuplets #E.B. White #Ed Sullivan #James Thurber #John Mosher #Lewis Mumford #Music in the Air 1934 #Perry Barlow #Sweet Adeline 1934

[postersbykeith]

#quotes #Lewis Mumford #life is the only art #without preparation