"In our time, must we not face the possibility that the
human mind as a social fact might be deteriorating in quality and cultural
level, and yet not many would notice it because of the overwhelming accumulation
of technological gadgets? Is not that one meaning of rationality without
reason? Of human alienation? Of the absence of any free role for reason in
human affairs? The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings: Those who use
these devices do not understand them; those who invent them do not understand
much else. That is why we may not,
without great ambiguity, use technological abundance as the index of human
quality and cultural progress."
C.
Wright Mills, 1959
