[Forthcoming]A selection from Mumford's The City in History published in 1961. “This metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real than paper and ink and celluloid. It is a world where the great masses of people, unable to have direct contact with more satisfying means of living, take life vicariously, as readers, spectators, passive observers: a world where people| Madness and Civilization, Cosmos and History: An Anthology
A selection from Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization, 1934. ObjectivesDuring the last thousand years the material basis and the cultural forms of Western Civilization have been profoundly modified by the development of the machine. While people often call our period the "Machine Age," very few have... any clear notion as to its origins. Popular historians usually date the great| Madness and Civilization, Cosmos and History: An Anthology