Technical difficulty

“ And can the simple people be blamed? They were aware that they stood in the midst of an unprecedented happening; indeed, an emergency. For a machine had failed!
Not in the memory of the eldest among us has a machine failed. ”

“ All these laborious operations are carried out by the machines, each under the control of one man whose mind is intent upon the work, ready to stop the machine or adjust the material as may be required. ”

“ To sit there, watching the machine, knowing that it is driving you insane, and that the machine is causing you physical pain, and that there is nothing that you can do about either—that, Lord of All, is the supreme torture. ”

“ We are being hustled from life to death by experts—by mechanicians. And just as they turn out buttons and pins by wholesale methods of production, so they are now turning out the crippled and the dead by machinery. ”

“ This human machine, which is shown to us as the masterpiece of the Creator's industry, has it not a thousand ways of deranging itself? Would we admire the skill of a mechanic, who should show us a complicated machine, liable to be out of order at any moment, and which would after a while destroy itself? ”

“ How absurd should we deem the conduct of a mechanic, whose business it was to rectify the errors of any complex machine, should he merely provide himself with the finest and fittest tools for the purpose, and neglect to learn its mechanism, by which alone he can be able to discover the causes of the error, or stoppage of its different movements, and consequently what is wanting to be done, to render it again perfect or useful. ”

“ The delicate services of this wonderful machine have increased certain industries a thousandfold, though at first, like all other improved methods of work, it was supposed to be the destroyer of these industries, and to bring untold miseries upon all who lived by the needle. ”

“ For they had lived in a highly mechanical world, and the technicians who alone understood the workings of that world had all been destroyed, and the sources of power had all been cut off—and power was the food without which they could not long survive. ”

“ I have always entertained the same idea as I do at present. Imperfections will exist in the machinery; but I conceive that the main points of difficulty have been removed by the experiments I have made, and that all those now remaining are practical difficulties, which will be removed by further experience ”

“ The point is stressed that failure, even though occasional, to conform to these requirements, causes inaccuracies in the functioning of the machine, serious in their consequences and difficult to trace to their source, with consequent injury to the reputation of the machines and the good will of the lessors. ”

“ The engineer jumped wild-eyed to the control lever to stop the machine. All the workers, whether singing or quarrelling, those on the stacks, those on the ladders, those at the sheaves,—all stood stock still, hands raised high, a cry of terror strangled in their throats. ”

“ But the efficiency expert who spends his time seeking to save one screw on a machine, or a button or a stitch on a garment is a menace to society. In making any machine, engineers allow for what is called the 'factor of safety.' They know that every machine at times will be called on to sustain undue strains or stresses, and they allow a margin of strength to meet these unusual demands. ”

“ Seeing the machines at work to-day, and remembering that every defect so far shown is purely mechanical, it is impossible not to be convinced of their value. But the trifling mechanical defects and lack of experience show the risk of cutting out trials. A season of experiment with a small workshop at hand may be all that stands between success and failure. ”

“ If further progress seems checked by inadequate returns for efforts made, in any case, to advance beyond present practice, it becomes the duty of the engineer to detect the cause of such hinderance, and, having found it, to remove it. ”

“ Such folly is never heard of in an engineer; but with us human beings, who own and manage a far more wonderful machine than any steam engine, we hear of it often, and always, always the tale winds up with the inevitable catastrophe. ”

“ The organization for effecting this in every country is so excellent and so wonderful, that it is like a machine.
In fact, it is a machine, and with all the faults of a machine. Now one of the faults of a machine, a fault which increases in importance with the complexity of the machine, is the enormous disturbance which may be produced by a cause seemingly trivial. That such is the case with the machine which the commerce of every great nation comprises, every-day experience confirms. ”

“ From what I have said, and from much more which a little reflection will suggest to you, you will see that without several circumstances turn out more favorable than has been stated, the machine will be clumsy and defective, and that it will cost much time to bring it to any tolerable degree of perfection, and that for me to interrupt the career of our business would be imprudent ”

“ A complicated machine or Engine, of almost invaluable worth, by the fault of the smallest of its screws, the slightest inaccuracy of in the smallest cog of its most diminutive wheel—an imperceptible flaw—is rendered useless, or totally wrecked, carrying destruction to all around. ”

“ We leave the appreciation of all these factitious means and of these superadditions to those who are in the habit of constructing machines; they well know their insufficiency, the great loss of working power, and how rapidly all the systems are destroyed, unless the greatest care be paid to the preservation of the active forces. ”

“ The process of mechanical invention continues every day on an ever increasing scale of magnitude. Now that process, however necessary, however beneficial, involves some of the chief evils of our present phase of what we call civilisation, partly because it has deteriorated the quality of all human products and partly because it has enslaved mankind, and in so doing deteriorated also his quality. ”

“ Some of us have made a pretty bad mess of it, for we tore out the screws and pulled apart the adjustments so hastily and carelessly that we cannot now find how they fit. And millions of other machines are working wrong because the engineers do not know how to keep them in order, put them in repair, or even what levers operate them. ”

“ So that even now the machines will only serve on condition of being served, and that too upon their own terms; the moment their terms are not complied with, they jib, and either smash both themselves and all whom they can reach, or turn churlish and refuse to work at all. ”

“ Mechanical communications theoretically accelerate supply, while the supply of a force cut loose and living on the country is soon exhausted. But the mechanical factor also depends upon a moral factor. ”

“ In the second system, the time consumed in removing and fixing the machines is reduced to a minimum, and the chief portion of the time during which the machines are at the working face is, consequently, occupied in actual boring, a circumstance that is highly favourable to machine labour. ”

“ It is in the mechanic arts dealing with brute matter that the modern technology holds over all else, in matter-of-fact insight, in the naïveté of the questions with which its adepts search the facts of observation, and in the crudity (anthropomorphically speaking) of the answers with which they are content to go back to their work. ”

“ Their situation grew from bad to worse, as at the same time that they were falling into a state of physical and mental deterioration, the improvements in many machines made greater and greater demands on the capability of those who were operating them. ”

“ And such an unthinking mechanical way of living, when like Machines we are condemn’d every day to repeat the impertinencies of the day before, shortens our Views, contracts our Minds, exposes to a thousand practical Errors, and renders Improvement impossible, because it will not permit us to consider and recollect, which is the only means to attain it. ”

“ So that we can affirm that what we presently know is already sufficient for resolving any of the great problems which stand in the order of the day-- prime-motors without the use of steam, the storage of energy, the transmission of force, or the flying-machine. If these problems are not yet solved, it is merely because of the want of inventive genius, the scarcity of educated men endowed with it, and the present divorce between science and industry. ”

“ Through the ages our lives became easier, and required less manual work. Machinery did everything we desired. Most of them were automatically repaired and serviced, while the permanent machines ran on through the ages without care. As generation after generation lived and died, under these conditions, we lost most of our former knowledge. ”

“ Because evils have developed and may develop as a result of these increasing complexities in industrial conditions, shall we deny ourselves the maximum benefit which may be derived from using the new devices of progress? ”

“ In the first place, the predominance of the man over the machine causes the latter to work erratically whenever the former is changed. The mechanism is so responsive to the touch that an unskilful hand can quickly produce disaster. ”

“ To attempt any sudden changes in so complex a machinery, which already strains so severely the energies of the small number of officials employed in working it, would be inevitably to throw the whole out of gear. ”

“ Everything was run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in control everywhere, the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments. They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and heart-breaking in its mechanicalness. ”

“ For the most part, they are the old and the feeble, pale of face and tottering in step. The pursuit of health with them would seem a vain and fruitless effort; the machine appears to have run its destined time, and all the skill of man is unavailing to repair it. ”

“ Compare this situation with what would happen if the most complex machine, more complicated than anything science fiction could describe, came to a halt because there was no human thought to keep it going. ”

“ How such rusty, battered, old-fashioned, rough-and-ready machinery can be got to work at all, it is hard to say; but it does. Of course the engines are continually breaking down, or bursting, or doing something or other offensive. ”

“ The misfortune is, that there is a vast deal of machinery and putting together, and I am the worst person living for managing it. You know I am impenetrably dull in every thing that requires a grain of common sense. The inventor is to come to me on Friday, and try if he can make me remember my right hand from my left. I could as soon have invented my machine as manage it; yet it has cost me ten guineas, and may cost me as much more as I please for improving it. ”

“ Their minds cannot be read, they cannot be restored to life, so we cannot learn from them."
"Man is doomed, if these beams cannot be stopped," said C-R-21, present chief of the machine rulers, in the vibrationally correct, emotionless tones of all the race of machines. "Let us concentrate on the two problems of stopping the beams, and the Ultimate Energy till the reenforcements, still several days away, can arrive." ”

“ In this modern machine technology the ruling norm is the highly impersonal, not to say brutal, concept of mechanical process, blind and irresponsible. The logic of this technology, accordingly, is the logic of the machine process,—a logic of masses, velocities, strains and thrusts, not of personal dexterity, tact, training, and routine. In the degree in which the information that comes to hand comes encumbered with a teleological bias, a connotation of personal bent, it is unavailable or refractory under this logic. ”

“ If it did its work more slowly, less workmen were required; and though each movement of the machine would perpetuate the same errors, these might be reduced to a minimum by the very simple expedient of carefully reading and correcting the "proofs". ”

“ The task is one of the greatest, the most [103] vital, and the most promising which mankind has ever faced. With the general theories proved and demonstrated, the great crisis of invention has passed, and the slow, unspectacular process of development and application has set in. ”

“ But owing partly to the inadequacy of the machinery for giving a free course to these various aspirations—partly to the fact that the machinery itself was antiquated, in bad repair, and had become clogged with a variety of obstructions—there was an unfortunate tendency on the part of every one who had any particular object very much {216} at heart, to regard every one else who was equally concerned about any other object as an impediment in his path. ”

“ The fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of machinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to their souls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like radium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them. ”

“ The discomforts of his profession are sometimes severe, and its dangers as certain as they are at times appalling. Therefore we welcome any mechanical method which at once shortens his work, lessens his peril, and protects property from damage. ”

“ And as in the course of time, under favourable local conditions, the habitual imputation of teleological capacities has in some measure fallen into disuse, the mechanic arts have gained; and every such gain has in its turn, as conditions permitted, acted cumulatively toward the discredit and disuse of the teleological method of knowledge, and therefore toward an acceleration of technological gain in this field. ”

“ This prospect fills us with concern as well as with amazement. How shall we control these automatic machines, these robots, these Frankensteins? What will there be left for us to do to earn our living? ”