Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution. Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.
The liberating force of technology the instrumentalization of things turns into ... the instrumentalization of man.
I bought a laptop in 1999, and it was quite liberating, because I could make a lot of my own decisions.
Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.
The purpose of computers is human freedom.
If technology does not liberate all people for the pursuit of higher aspirations in human achievement, then all its technical potential will be meaningless.
We must be optimistic about the future because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are creative and ambitious, intelligent machines will liberate us and be as profound a boon to our prosperity as electricity. If we are fearful, and fail to press ahead, we could be overwhelmed by automation and inequality.
Desktop publishing was a big innovation that meant small groups or even poor societies could do their own publication without the capital investment in a major printing press. That's a big difference. Same is true of more advanced technologies - it can offer plenty of liberatory possibilities - can - but whether it does or not or whether it serves for coercion depends on socioeconomic decisions.
The function of the machine is to liberate man from brute burdens, and release his energies to the building of his intellectual and spiritual powers for conquests in the fields of thought and higher action.
