Andrew Ure was a professor at the University of Glasgow, who was devoted to revolutionizing the factory system by increasing the overall wealth and productivity during Britain’s industrial age in 1835. Ure’s views on the factory system was essentially that productivity and constancy would increase by uniting man and machine. He believed that this revolutionary integration would not only help increase profit, but it would ultimately increase the quality of life of the workers as well. Ure wrote The Philosophy of Manufactures to point out the flaws of the factory system at the time and to optimize the wealth and productivity. Although Ure thought that the integration of machine would better for both the factory owners and workers, his ambitions …show more content…
Though Ure’s intensions may not have been to directly criticize the capabilities of human beings, his excessive endorsement of machines had a negative impact on the human work forces. Ure states that human industry would become vastly productive “when [this industry] no longer proportioned in its results to muscular effort, which is by its nature fitful and capricious.” Statements such as these seems to categorizes human efforts as something that is useless and inadequate, even though for many centuries everything was woven, packaged, and created through the use of human hands. There is an enormous gap in Ure’s appraisal of human capabilities versus machine capabilities that seems to be consistent throughout his book. An example of this bias towards human versus machines is shown when he explains machines as a “blessing which physio-mechanical science has bestowed on society, and … [it is] ameliorating the lot of mankind.” This pedestal Ure places machines on is very demoralizing towards humans, as it essentially makes people obsolete. The execution of his influence in this book geared his readers towards a perspective that humans are too flawed to be profitable, rather than to express the uniting capabilities of man and …show more content…
Many of Ure’s statements are geared towards the eventual replacement of humans in the factory setting in order to increase profit. He utilizes the flaws in humans along with the proliferating capabilities of machines to influence his readers to believe that ultimately humans will do more harm than good. This is shown as he states that “in the factory … [machines] leaves the attendant nearly nothing at all to do,” whereas humans have to complete every task through muscular exertion, which ultimately causes “innumerable [amounts of] short pauses,” earning men lower wages. Furthermore, Ure states that “the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery [is] to supersede human labor altogether.” As a person looking to reform the industrial sector of Britain and to improve the quality of life of hardworking people, he is oblivious to the fact that this would ultimately outsource their jobs, which would in fact make their lives
In the nineteenth century, various inventions like the steam engine stimulated demand for products, thus introducing factories and workshops to manufacture those commodities. The popularization of Manchester initiated assorted reactions towards the industrialization of the cities surrounding Great Britain. While the industrial revolution ensued, numerous concerns occurred which all contemplated the affects of factories and industries engaged by the working division of society. As industry began to evolve for the operational lower classes, the positive, negative, and mutual reactions are denoted by various speakers whom were among the diverse social classes of society.
In today’s fast paced modern society, there are many individual’s who wish we could turn back time to the where we weren’t surrounded by computers, cell phones and all manners of surveillance and recording. Many say that these things have added a hassle to our lives by being striped away from our own personal privacy and educational learning experiences. However, the evolvement of new technology during the industrial revolution was more then just the loss of privacy and quality education, but the loss of jobs that many blue collared workers relied on. In the English industrial revolution of the 19th century, industries were being revolutionized by new mechanization and organizational techniques which took the place of hand produced work. This
“The Philosophy of Manufacture” by Andrew Ure aimed to show the improvements that the Industrial Revolution brought about. Ure restated throughout the excerpt of the book that, “The principle of the factory system then is, to substitute mechanical science for hand skill.” Ure wanted to get rid of workers hand crafting goods and put them to better use of overseeing machines that could do the work quicker and for cheaper. Skilled workers would take longer and make more mistake; therefore, unskilled workers were preferred. This is one of the reasons Ure fully supported using children for workers. He explained the jobs weren’t difficulty and that there was still time to relax while working if the overseer allowed it. Ure felt that industrialization should benefit everyone. He said, “I have seen tens of thousands of old, young, and middle-aged of both sexes, many of them too feeble to get their daily bread by any of the former modes of industry, earning abundant food, raiment, and domestic accommodation, without perspiring at a single pore.” Everyone was able to improve their standard of living in a much easier way. Lower classes had enough to afford housing and their food while the wealthy earned more money. During 1835, steam powered engines were high in demand in England which created many jobs. Women were hired as cheaper alternatives to work in textile factories.
He sees workers choose work to maintain life; work is not a voluntary thing. People create products that do not belong to them, and they work to satisfy the other’s need (eg. factory owners), not their own, and were considered to be “forced labor”. Therefore, in a sense work becomes a way people disconnect from their human nature. (p. 51,52) The act of production in a way alienates workers from their activities. Workers are alienated from the object they were produced, the more productivity a worker achieves the more he or she loses the nature of human beings. Since the product is not the creation of their own, workers bec...
In 1909 E.M. Forster wrote the ground-breaking short story “The Machine Stops”, it foretold of a dystopian society where mankind entrusted itself to a machine which took care of al their wants and needs, and ultimately lead to their demise. In Forster’s “The Machine Stops”, he illustrates the need for man to become less dependent on machines and technology for their livelihoods and life in general. In Disney’s “WALL-E” we se many of these themes again. In both cases humans have become so inept at taking care of themselves that the loss of the machine or machines that care for them would be catastrophic and deadly. Humans have invested so much trust and power into these machines that they no longer have any real control, in addition their dependence on technology has severely distanced them from nature and more importantly their own human nature.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano” the theme of machine versus man is a major subject matter. In this novel, the machines force man to give up their individuality to be categorized as an engineer or manager. Vonnegut tries to give men back their power without having to depend on machines. Machines have replaced men to the point where they feel that their self-worth and value in life is no longer important. One of the main characters in this novel is a prime example of machine dependency.
Robots are important to humans in the workforce, even though, it may not appear so. In Better than Humans: Why Robots Will- and Must- Take Our Jobs, Kelly initially unsettles the reader by noting that our, “job [will be] taken by machines”- if not already taken (Kelly 300). The reason why
Industrial Revolution, which took place over much of the nineteenth century, had many advantages. It provided people with tools for a better life; people were no longer dependent on the land for all of their goods. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for people to control nature more than they ever had before. However, now people were dependent on the new machines of the Industrial Age (1). The Revolution brought with it radical changes in the textile and engine worlds; it was a time of reason and innovations. Although it was a time of progress, there were drawbacks to the headway made in the Industrial Revolution. Granted, it provided solutions to the problems of a world without industry. However, it also created problems with its mechanized inventions that provided new ways of killing. Ironically, there was much public faith in these innovations; however, these were the same inventions that killed so many and contributed to a massive loss of faith. These new inventions made their debut in the first world war (2) ).
“I shall briefly explain how I conceive this matter. Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects
It is because of the Machine dehumanizing people that also prevents humans from adapting to new situations, which causes their eventual extinction. The society in “The Machine Stops” is one of isolation and one that discourages direct interactions between pe...
The write-up by Jacques Ellul talks about how important a part of our lives science and technology have become. Technology and science combined have give us a world of machines. It gives us a vision of a world where technique would demolition anything in its part that does not propagate its idea or logic, which could even include humanity. what is also surprising is how what he talks about has proven to be more relevant in today's time than days in the days it was actually written in.
Gray, Robert. The factory question and industrial England, 1830-1860. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, Great Britain, 1996.
Many individuals cannot imagine their life without technology, however, when a society is overly dependent on technological innovations, human’s innate instincts are stultified. E.M Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” demonstrates the horrors of abandoning physical contact for a technologically mediated interactions in a futuristic society. The residents think that they live in an ideal society where they are governed by a man-made object labeled as “The Machine”. The Machine fulfills the inhabitants every need causing the inhabitants to lack the ability to produce their own individual ideas. This paper analyzes Forster’s short story with the view of establishing its central theme as a basis of supporting the surmise that technological advancement and development is detrimental to humanity. In this regard, this paper argues that technology has a dehumanization effect dulling human instincts.
‘prior to industrialization, craftsmen set their own standards on which their livelihoods and reputations depended…….,after mass production came, the manufacturing process broke down work into repetitive tasks, taking away from the worker the possibility of self-checking quality...
There are a lot of differences between man and machine. But there aren’t as many differences as some may think. In the story “Who Can Replace Man” by Brian Aldiss, the machine society is eerily similar to the human society that we have today. The machines are reflecting what humans are like and how humans value things.