Study On Mumford’s Organic Theory Of Technology

The rapid development of technology accelerates the pace of humansociety to move forward in certain extent, the advanced technology createsa lot of wealth, the greed of human reflected in the excessive relianceon technology.As an outstanding philosopher of technology in the United States,making the history of technology as a standard, Mumford builds hisphilosophy of technology. Meanwhile, as a humanistic philosopher oftechnology, he not only focuses on the technology itself, but also paysmore attention to the question between technology and human, and it isvivid to show that relationship between technology and the nature of humanthrough his unique perspective. Mumford has a great success in all aspectsof history, sociology, architectural criticism and urban planning; it isso helpful for him to study the technical problems within multi-fieldtheoretical background.This paper is mainly about Mumford’s organic technology ofphilosophy; it analyzes and discusses the problem of technology and humannature. The occurrence and development of technology is a part of humanculture, people should focus on the relationship of technology and humanin the technological research, technology also acts different roles inthe process of human development. In the progress of human civilization,the technology itself also develops with the progress of human cultural.However, rapidly developed modern technology leads to the predicamentthat human society operates under an abnormal state. People are extremelylack of initiative and positive consciousness and behavior of production. Machine become the main power of production instead of worker, machineencroaches people’s life in the almighty way, human will be the slaveof machine and dominated by it if overly attach themselves to machine.Focusing on the “megamachine” era of modern single technology, Mumfordwants to quest an organic mode of technology to relieve the contradictionwhich is caused by human and technology. Mumford argues that mind shouldbe taken as the fundamental requirement, regress to the state of humannature according to the direction of mind, finding the living world forhuman. He considers that it is the outlet for human to change our conditionunder the modern “megamachine” by the way of developing livingtechnology. Unfortunately, there is no specific measure to solve the realproblems of “megamachine” in Mumford’s philosophy of technology, sothis is also the limitation of his view of organic technology.By studying Mumford’s organic theory of technology the author wantsto warn the issue of modern technology. It is because technology playsan irreplaceable role in promoting social improvement, and the evolutionof technology affects the trend of human society notably. As a result,in order to ensure the dominant position of human beings in the socialdevelopment and the people’s health and the diversity of life, human mustdo something that could control and adjust the technology facing thestatus and the future road of modern technology.