This Land Is Your Land; 21; Ronald B. Adams, Part 1

isn't is the continuing analysis and discussion others and hear what today's program is your host dr joe stone welcome to this land is your land we have with us today a most unusual and interesting guest his name is ronald lee adams and he is a research consultant here in new york oh mr adams was trained as an industrial designer he's developed a different viewpoint rather than invest his time and talent in the design of automobiles refrigerators and other consumer product's he's interested in the form and function of cities in the major capital projects that give shape to the ways in which we live mr adams is currently working on a book

concerning technology and urban form and i've asked him to join us today and share with us some of his unusual imaginative and provocative ideas welcome ron went to jail your book deals with the historic relationships as well as the present problems between technology in urban development the purpose i would say is to begin to predict an influence the former future development what we'd be begin by discussing the background of these relationships ok gerald before we start i just want to take a minute to refer to industrial design which you mentioned that i've been involved in for some time this time i think was probably coined back in the early part of the century by a number of people who got involved in in designing consumer products for consumers are spiraling these things to make them more acceptable for merchandising point of view

the automobile companies in detroit i think that they have always used the word spiraling and i really think this is more appropriate we're having a number of different activities that go on other people call industrial designers in atlanta area the engineering that as strictly to do with designing factories for production in those areas not an engineering category but it specifically addressed two and the design and onshore facilities but the point i wanna make is that the two main areas of industrial design you might say the two approaches to no shows on our styling and rational was not mitt we go now into the point of the ya the background history of some of the items in your book the problems between technology urban development and how they rose back in history well technology in our informal and we just have to find what i mean

i guess the technology it would be appropriate to say that i see technology as the means by which man altars in his environment and whether that's a with a modern technology of rocketry year with the old fashioned one hour or whatever technology is basically dissolving the means by which homo sapiens insofar as he's been different from other animals or simply go around and scratch the ground and find food and aid to pummel sapiens has developed what we call technology which is a mechanized powerful means of altering things in his environment urban form i guess i would say is the way in which homo sapiens has altered his environment whether it's just the village green with some hot surrounded or whether it's a whole city it's the degree to which he's changed the environment to make it more functional for his usual they should he drew an interesting parallel between civilization and

biology in terms of rationalization at his nature rationalizing organisms adaptation to its environment how would you put this in terms of the human civilization why it's a big winners a nature rationalize is an organism's relationship that environment i think really that is a dynamic poses that goes on i think the point i'm trying to make and certainly people know about adaptation we've all heard about that since darwin and regular work has been done on them any different act areas of biological adaptation when i'm making is i think is that the basic similarity between the way in which an organism adapt itself to its environment and even its environment to itself searches and wholesome wave eaters adapt there they create their dams to adapt the creek to their environment or two to be more functional nine points i make is that

i think that the basic similarities all the way down from the most primitive forms of life up to and including human civilization an important part of your definition of technology depends on getting clear meaning to the words economy industry technology machine and tool i wonder if we can talk about each of these and try to establish and working definition ok so the economy oh i want to go back just a second and the typhoon did rather well to what i'm just talking about and that is the day when we say what we say the organisms adapted mean i think that all these words that are applied to human culture such as economy has such as technology i think all these words apply to certain basic dynamics that have applied every single species for example that when i say monotone before about how organisms adapt to their environment

there's a very dynamic process and an end and a type of species are a variety of a species exist in a certain eco system and they they bite off a piece of that eco system if you will for their own use in other words the big cats are the predators and they pray probably on the largest animals that anything praise on a prayer they prey on gazelles and an antelope very large animals and right down to it down to have a fairly small animal i suppose when the times are bad they even pray on rodents so this is their adaptation they've adapted this particular piece of their eco system turtles look at for different views of the eco system they have their adaptations is over a million of time to form this very hard shell protect them so they're not they're not fast more powerful like the big cats but the big well protected the rodents down another piece of the eco system that no one was using that was that was the earth taken a pin that'll hold burleson the ground is no one there except the earth warms which is maybe something unique

so it might be said that in the particular piece of territory at a piece of an act of an eco system so to speak weather let's say these lions intent or in the form of their pride where when they adapt this particular piece of territory but their use you might say this is their economy is the same as the human beings again and uncertain region and they use the rivers for transporting water and the sewage waste waste removal and so forth they use this whole piece of the region and the way they do things the way they've made things to eat and then produce things to wear into with this as their economy so i think that many of these words and we always used in modern times sublime our societies can be also applied to all forms of organisms have carved out a piece of territory for their lives and i just would make the last point and that is that when we talk about these these adaptations with wit with a line as the big massive jaws and this powerful laws there were the turtle has as hard shelled a human being was the first one to develop

detachable adaptation of that sort and his detachable claus let's say and hammers handsaws and what have you this is what gave him the great freedom to develop a whole variety to develop and so what the turtle he could develop weapons to fight and to kill lions had to develop clothing and housing and so forth to go anywhere in the world so they get this this was really a great leap forward in terms of other species and then when the homo sapiens develop this particular format it seemed to be a defining economy in terms of ecology that its economy in terms of education in terms of the use of materials in terms of the use of natural implements perhaps by animals is that a fair thing to say yeah i mean that's pretty much what i'm saying and i'm saying that it will later when they don't look in the industrial revolution and this is a rather inappropriate way to describe what happened a couple of centuries ago because an industry i mean every society even anthropologists and the right about the most remote

civilizations talk about well the basic industry these people over there they're a form of industry was of a couple leaders in certain way and then and the industry is merely a subset of the larger activity of the economy the economy is the way that that species has gotten into that particular piece of territory and they did function to support their civilization and support their culture so that i see it as basically the same kind of economy is a word we use for human societies but that basic thing goes on away the beavers are set up the way they get their food and the whole thing in an eco system can we talk about the euro the words the machine and tonight i know you you give considerable attention to those and i know that you're interested in the way these furs or the way they defined in the way they had to relate we'll tour that we all know we're looking we offer brigade image what people mean by tools and in the first in this first major development of the society which

is you know mechanical pay really sick or old stone that stated goal to drill lasted for ninety percent of man's history on this planet million years or give or take half a million years very long period of time during which we merely had tools and plus some housing and support and it was a very rudimentary thing it usually a fixed object to it you carry in your hand hurt that would include weapons and so forth i think the basic good of the really basic thing to understand about the toll of that and a lot of that bird by which it became such a vital element a man's making this first great leap that separated him from all the species with an end an spread him in terms of his his culture his economy if you will all over the globe the reason for this was the fact that the two took it as something that was not a part of many didn't have to carry like a very heavy quarter horse or teeth he could take a rock and that rock was so hard and so dense and so massive that it could bring that down on the skull virtually any creature in

existence personality including hippopotamuses names like the cotton animals that he might conceivably wanted to eat other mammals such as lions and gazelle some smaller creatures he could write and typically other people the other defendants as a place he could bring this stone down on any kind of skeleton and and break it was the mass force concentrations that of a stone could bring to bear on a skeleton of a living organism were simply of a new order and it never been done before the organisms had adapted in terms of their environment and their environment did not include this kind of thing so they were not offended in sicily all became very all creatures of the world became natural prayed a man with his new books a weapon technology which is the stone at the end of a stick no chains it is of course a different order of fang and they're they're very numerous different ways of understanding the shia in the modern sense we mean a machine as we

think of and since the so called dust revolutionary ever ole steam engine over in the corner and it's popping smoke and gears are whirling in the rada clanking back and forth or maybe it's a more sophisticated machine or maybe it's an automobile but that there are ways of understanding their other ways of understanding and shane and that is also that it's a device a combination of different elements to get work done and in that in that understanding a man wielding iraq is a kind of worker shane he has the is the stick in a sand and the rock is attached into the stick and he controlled city provided most of the force but the actual impact of the mass in this was right about iraq a man behind a plow plow being pulled by an art the ox provides provided a tremendous amount of force that had never been seen before so the men at that point only been in the in the plowing machine which consisted of an ox and the plowing device itself which which fertile ground and men tracking along by not

providing petrol imports to the beast and making sure the the plough state in the place this was a form of machine itself and then of course we have the modern generation change which generate their own power know rely on either wind or animals or other creatures to pull to refinance a little league the plough for example you would call a tune or machine i would tell you without getting into the very fine shadings of of semantics i'm sure people could they didn't want to do i would simply say that the plows and as as a man is operating a lave the work element he will very often cold too that too was says is mechanically locked into the lady and he takes his work piecemeal a sudden they're not to cut it because the spending action provide them shane i would say that the eu the plough which of course a planted the whole pile itself as a basic work helmet or the tool and it exists within this framework of what we were

calling in the broadest sense of the shame if it exists is because the work element and the power element is the the oxen the controlling elements ma'am could you say that a machine is a somehow collection of tools or a group of tools put together an articulate way so that they operate as a machine along with men yeah that's what i was saying no i would say in the shade in terms of our modern understanding is even more limited understanding of it are that it's essentially an aggregate mechanical device and in the limited understanding shane it provides its own power that is to say that some kind of ai engine that transforms us toward energy and fuel into our actual quarter drive but to drive shafts and movement we can talk now about what you call the three technological stages of development can we define those and then go into somebody tell what they are like that's really sort of what we've been talking around a police pointed wit we just put up some of the basic elements that are involved

these three stages of books a cultural development that voice and areas for time present a perfectly consistent with with normal an anthropological are writing i mean i'm not trying to identify some new stadium simply saying that the often in the literature we see people of edify bronze age or they talk about well this is the age of metal or this nuclear a age and brzezinski talks about chronic age there are different ways of describing an agent i think usually they tend to talk about some aspect of like the technology for the industry or the artistic output of culture of civilization and i'm just looking at it in the broadest terms you can recognize three major revolutions that have totally altered the way that the virtually all human beings live on the earth at least those who are displayed in the revolution usually and by process of diffusion the ideas of some cultural revolution such as the

modern dust revolution gradually diffuse of the whole plan until eventually everyone else is doing the same thing so these three major revolutions and talk about a war already sort of aware of and paleo ethic which i said i'm an old stone age says ninety percent of human history and i think most of your you know your rear migratory tried to ground picked berries and it's a gathering kind of economy make around they picked berries they kill animals and so forth and they don't farmer and like that than the neolithic or new stone age is the second a cultural revolution which amounted to place let's say five millennia ago and i was when they did in fact find a fixed site perfect place to stay and on that point at that point that they begin to do husband animals and then you know in the farm and so forth and began to build villages ultimately be and built cities so that was a whole the second cultural revolution the modern cultural revolution a guy i see i think anyone can really see the whole world wide cultural revolution has

followed on the industrial revolution that began in england gets a couple centuries ago so what i'm really saying is that done at the risk of sounding like a flaming technocrat we're really saying is that the thing which is probably altered the foreman and practice of human civilizations more than anything else really has been the levels of technology in the first level of technology the one in which they realistic cultures were all centered based was this period of the technology which consisted of taking all storms in finding objects shipping them down perhaps to a slightly better form tying them together and the sticks and so forth and others became weapons until the whole system of of tools the second stage was based on its technology which was now it will color of the machine where the power of the man group as men continue to provide the control and put that the power was provided now in this in this the revolution by women sometimes by when

gradients with a broad more money by watery and liberal water over a waterfall is to turn axles in and when mills and all of this was really a second level of technology and the nerve the modern is the third level technology we have high powered machines so what was the cultural transformation from the pill will affect to the new with it in other words there was adhesive it was a change between these two a technological stages of development but what brought on these changes what i mean basically the only obama changed somewhat an environmental conditions became were just sort of about right for this change to take place i mean we had to live with a technology that meant we had foreign editor speaks of things are tied together and support and they had you know of those old stone which we remain stones in stick city found bones to work apparently taken dozen years or

so ago that it was the end of most recent it ice age and the ice was withdrawing and was moving back to the north and so a certain areas that had been written you know very rich and lush and you can ask around you could pick berries forever and kill small animals is very easy life in some senses or both a graduate of war began to drop to two dry up in this core surrounded the east or the police or the mediterranean which is where many of these important things took place in egypt and political mesopotamia which is modern day iraq as the ice moved away in the water dried up and left away seasons award so as men gather around these places they're you know the get out of the daily kill all creatures and then drinking water and the line would commandeer his kiln and homo sapiens with tremendous guilt everyone got that they stayed but of course those things gathered around the airways says it wouldn't take a very smart i mean even homo sapiens was more have become a look at all these creatures and say well you know they're all around russia's going to build a fence and keep them all around the world we could kill our leisure end perhaps the

same process or perhaps because most the animals had been killed off they began also notice of the grass grow an ad was green every spring and toward a no drop their seats in the seats probably grew up around where they've been eating before is like warm on those fear in the south leading down there so it really wasn't there didn't take a lot of science to recognize that things grew up sort of around we drop states they start dropping salesperson you know you're raising them to be and do it systematically be in the bill with sticks with hoses or what about technological inventions such as housing for example the invention of this particular point was of course plowing and as we understand lawyers against hobart which is you know plowing with within the system and within shana describe israeli agriculture and i was really a i orders of magnitude different between the tail because of the men might be out there you know they had there's specialization by gender back then into the men go out the hunting and the

women would would cook and maybe would plant the grasses turned out they did most of the whole farming and so when they decided to get excited about it may discover that they could take a whole and maybe a patch of mine would be said they'd captured around the corral they would just holistic along and they would cut a continuous hole in the ground and they gradually or finest week we're calling the plowing the shame which was meant they developed a good cutting service there see really all of a sudden had process foreman so you had this this ox but with tremendous power dramatist mistake of his cutting service continuously opening the ground continuously dropping in siege from his pocket while controlling the banks and so that one man in our farming that he could do on the amount of the produce that he could produce was like vastly greater than anything never been done before so behold this set the stage for the production of the kind of surplus that made great civilizations possible because the river not the whole population was needed not a principle you now but it may be owning it five or nice day six or

ninety percent of the people are carving out on the ground they can produce a tremendous amount of food and this in turn led to people becoming more stable in their locations is there right and like detroit lead you into the year discussing the role of housing and that's the the more permanent housing that was developed rather than the nomadic tencent song maybe discuss yeah that's and that's a very interesting point i think because as i mentioned before is we all know other creatures develop their own housing and that that you know the building housing is not a particularly human characteristic beavers a very nice little communal housing sand and serve imperial cities as it were down under their bare mounds the thing about homo sapiens housing and its clothing again in the in the paralytic stage i'm simply a matter of they're ripping my idol from animals and saw a song together and it can do pursell coverings and then using the same materials stretched over

some some long sticks that you could make as a foal nibble tent union and buzzer i think probably pretty well engineered i mean they had to have this material it would really last for a long time they got this year well tanned leather and they got a sobering unit all suitable flaps an open for ventilation and so when they're really rather sophisticated housing's compare to some of the thatched huts we think about and they had the day because it is highly efficient industry is highly efficient economy and they could go into an area and he could wipe out the food supply in you know in a matter of weeks or months girl you know because of this terrible technology of tools and weapons and so he had to be on the move and then of course there's the housing and cloning technology allowed him to go both north and self and into color and much colder climates so he really spread with his particular culture spread all over the world in this bus made him unique but the point of making is that rude this really introduced a significant element of this economy but have only said they found a sighted clear the site sufficiently alongside a river you know edison a police dance again in the right order and

then go out on this funding for aids and he had that we got when only animals we're gonna need pre william safire house and home we had together everything together and move on to another site so that the changes the lead the effort involved a carrot to do this now those housing and put it on his baxter the women's backs were carried make it to the next spot and then defies site and find one that would work with those lot of effort involved madden and day in the neolithic revolution the second cultural revolution or talk about he discovered that that you know he could be could get this food on the ground and murray could still go out and a little hunting but probably that wasn't the main thing the main thing is now they could get this grain on the ground could they don't keep animals in the corral he now could make a house that it actually could be much less sophisticated visiting have to be deemed eligible into a very tight portable stacking to just you know get some trees and pulling together and then drapes and some dung or grass or moderately

else it was at hand just sloppy stuff never make a very cheap quick else and this house then didn't have to be to this melody to stay in his house for four five six eight ten years to bang on how long it took him to form a plan so increasingly as he is he went on and of course he didn't keep moving because he would exhaust elana commentator ten year cycle you could make these the house became more sophisticated but the house would now last for eighteen years and really you know it's a lot nicer houses more commodious and more space and to set up is a set of his village plan you know of the mainstream all at once you done that then he was framed for the rest of that time together worked on some really was amortizing his efforts at creating housing over a much longer period of use them political activists in this further increase the efficiency of the neolithic to technology industry culture over that on the pallet you share that view with qatar to show them that we're only now emerging from the new with the culture and if we can

explore that just a little bit yeah so we are we still in a meal of the culture we're beginning to emerge from it or why we really moved and moved full stream into a new culture learning the show then it got this idea from from his mentor when the first grade and all the sovereign his name eddie and broil i think something like that you had said to me i think we're just now emerging from the neolithic neolithic times injured and but this was a very interesting idea and i think in terms of technology and that's one of the you know fundamental under important elements of the kind of culture that the technology is it's clear that in many ways a nineteen century season weren't were still living in nineteenth century what we call nineteen said century cities right now that's one of the big problems is how can we get the city's up to date modernize technologically speaking but they're what we call a work on a nineteenth century city is really a city that could could

just about as easily have been built and wrong or an ancillary i mean enron they already had sixteen seventy store seventy foot buildings you know that were like an unsaid various levels and in the case of the thing of of sun dried brooks you know which you just get the local neolithic material you know clay whatever new sun dry it you know it becomes harder than you'd stack that up we build walls in you put on a roof across it and wood wood spanning beings in between and toward the sun in this kind of technology is still really very much with this or other areas like the power technology of driving our factories driving our machines a lot that's changed since the dutch revolution we're now flying airplanes around him and a medal and record but there are building is still in many ways and really knew i think in terms of the technology that was a moment for station identification he's right we're

talking to ronald b adams was a research consultant here in new york the strategy is currently working on a book concerning technology and urban form and we're talking about some of the philosophical concepts in that book before the break we were talking about the three technological stages of development the halo effect and they'll affect and what we might call modern time one thing that we didn't cover was the use of materials in these three ages and perhaps you want to go back over that yet i think we were talking really about the different types of mechanization we talk about tools and that we're talking about mechanisms that you know the kinds of mechanisms that that are characteristic of the role of technology in those mechanisms berlusconi machines but i think it's more an in a modern engineering center would be more appropriate to say the paleo think was characterized by tools the music was really characterized by mechanisms in the modern history in on the limited sense of machines is characterized by

machines well it's very interesting about that what would the levels of mechanization also understanding is these materials because that's really it's really embrace of materials at those ages of undifferentiated traditionally by archaeologist they say paleo its economy coal stones over the word stone as virtually synonymous with material in terms of these understandings of what the cultural differentiation knew that meant new stone and i think that that what they really meant was the new stone the people found began to work with a really which was a sort of two types of the type of stone that you know while a political analyst cooking way this fire this type of stone would melt and sort of run run out from under the fire and then eventually it would harden up again in another big lump of the strange looking to flesh as a hazard modern technician would call in a metal when you see metal it's been melted down and then just slumped out on the ground and ends up in kind of a funny looking

blob which they call flesh so undermined pillars a man must have observed this a number of times and then the fact that there's this material are probably have come around to fire devil purity kept around the fire dropped it in there again each time to become more of a purer metal but it was always a thermal plastic mat material in the sense that as long as you put it don't have it would melt down again there's another type of material it probably also was around that probably were standing in some of the time and get on their feet and maybe slotted into the farm at its ceramic clay ensure that somebody notice that the louisville plays alongside the river at some point or other in the sun got on got very dry and they could use those they could cut those up with some rather crude tool maker bricks on and so probably wasn't too long before eventually someone noticed that if this material were exposed to enough he became fired as we say became a ceramic brick or ceramic of bowl or something there that it could be made into a shape that when one of its firearms exposed intensely for the

record time it would become very hard and they would now have a new material which it used to make go utensils potts and so what they really have those two types of the metal that can be reheated re melted in the ceramic which is a thermal setting when you put people in it sets and that's it you can't use of a party that a brick what are your views they say that the thermal setting materials would be the the new stones does in both types need a new star whilst on recently a rocket took in its and its native condition in egypt the way it had the head of a tax on that bet what was the old jewish girl stoner roommate old material and the new material which was that rocks that melted butter say metals and rocks but when he did frozen to a very hard for one they could never again be changed that was ceramic cells are really are your ear neolithic materials and of course your modern materials are materials that i mean an innovative since someone would sooner or later have to think of things in a very primitive situation would have to notice that that those things happened

that metals that would melt and could be used and that could use clay that way but the modern materials in many cases are not things that anyone would be in a primarily a function of the modern technology that is things like you know they're very sophisticated missiles that are very difficult to isolate and then refined petroleum of that as think a lot of refining iron ore she nuclear materials at that a lot of very sophisticated technology just bring them and being so that's a whole new generation of materials only show modern technology uses relies a lot and no sense could've given guess by prominent manmade know kicking rocks over that we're standing on a path along which is walking the concept of utopia plays an important early writings wretched explain the integration of utopian concepts and what you call the arrow of high mass consumption you know

i guess the best way to lead in to that is to say that you know our our modern and the third cultural revolution the modern culture of which usually based on extensive demand on the fact that there is a market that is your people are great numbers of people that are not like you know the poor egyptian working masses that all these big stones up to make pyramids of people now i have you know more parameters and so forth and they therefore can exert demand to buy consumer goods so we're really in a mass consumption type of culture i think it in and the reason i use the word utopia certainly you're not without a sense of the irony of using that and suggesting that perhaps we've entered into some kind of utopian here and i'm sure that many people will be startled to hear that considering the state of things but if you look back the utopian the way the two thomas moore and to live they actually do the way he described utopia was really a very primitive by

comparison with things today and a man a man living in the city of utopia couldn't walk around the city without permission of his father his wife and he couldn't go to another city without written consent of the president of utopia i mean is really weird you know like children below marriageable age were meant to stand beside the table all elders eight and were not speak a word i'm sure that most modern youth would be a little startled to find that was utopia that's really the way it was written i think that really would be toby was all about was it was an intense directed to recognize how bad things were at the time he was writing the fifteen year elizabethan england from how bad it was for most people and what does the thomas more was essentially saying was that we eat we have ideology that's in conflict with the way things are all around us so therefore we should use this ideology to create a new policy and this policy will create a new type of society and i think ever since that time and that there were even did this even goes back players' republic which was also you know when the socal idealized society

i think that the concert there was always be portraying scenarios is sense to promise more in each one of these scenarios was an attempt although somewhat radical in terms of its existing time to take the ideology that prevailed at that particular time and to say well you know everyone is deserving people to have a good life hacking would bring this about we write a scenario where everyone has as the benefits of of technology we have universal wealth distribution know those are really some of the important elements of utopia and i think that we you know when i say this that maybe were utopian irregular group in the fed that the leader be ross perot's characterization of the five stages of economic growth and he sees this as an interviewer of high mass consumption mass consumption many of the things that people have today many things you say just commonplace were like you'd been characterized as as advanced the science fiction utopian civilizations just fifty years ago so like you know yeah there you know every minute that was called the fusion has brought an

automobile and every family in radios and television at least in this this particular country which owen was one of the first united states in the industrial countries have entered an old one after the other and in this year of high mass consumption by which i simply mean that a great many people have got a large share of the good snack course the people of the popular soho establishment still has most of the babies tied up but i think we're seeing a process of deliverance of your bike that was quote an economic diffusion of goods and rights and freedom to people on a scale that really was only discussed in utopia novels and i think that's what happened i think the concept of utopia brings us to what is perhaps the most important factor a new work and that is a rational is rationalization of urban form can we talk about that in the historical context that you the sort of all then i think we ought to define very carefully what you mean by the rationalization of urban form

i would i would like to talk about rationalization even more broadly than just urban for it icy rationalization you know is as a very all pervading characteristic of modern society and modern cultures and of the third revolution or sings the second verse and we'll realize a rationalization rational rationalize let me just explain that how that words used maybe in technical for as somewhat different meaning than the way people maybe or ordinarily summonses rationalize away just rationalizing what you did was wrong but in scientific and technical literature it's commonly used to describe a process of making something whatever it is as efficient as it can bait an so i think this process goes all the way back to adaptation of the species would adapt itself isn't as efficiently as it could do to norman this was a process of rationalization of this this process of different species and then ultimately of cultures

and civilizations and support them adapting to their environment and their alarm was a natural environment and also ultimately convicted of other civilizations around that different civilization this process of rationalization to place largely by natural selection has to save the animals at that it will to their environment survived and those that didn't go get eaten up by the other animals my despair that became extinct and the same thing with civilization civilizations that rationalized themselves more effectively usually by very intuitive hit or miss kind of process they survived and i like those that develop better weapons of the developed the hittite developed a state did opt out iron us origin and fighting equipment and again galloping down in the you know white out thirty the babylonians and took over the civilization that's because they have better technology but they had of all they're just intuitively they had stumbled upon it so that most older civilizations up to let's say you know up to the lead

up to this most recent millennium they really blindly stumbled along and i saw a better technology or they they found one and they utilize the only developed it but it was never really hurt with a conscious and how can we make our society more rational rather refer to rationalize our society i think what has happened to be in the modern revolution of the day if we assume that began in the one thousand and some of the siege of that i think were planted their time in modern times that people began to study things i began to study how how for example an end in england a baby had a great deal of demand to meet with their technology in some way so that we got a punt more war to go to mine more irony or there's a tremendous demand for and that may get more efficiently to build steam power and they developed a lot of other things and i think that the writings of mark's perhaps but i think that the writing of saddam's more was a case of rationalize the society in terms of the ideology to make it to make and deliver the services for that

reason and i think this is why the utopian concept leads directly to the concept of rationalizing society ya ya think that that's that's what i mean i guess by utopian but utopia courses not terminal state is not something that would you get there it's over and it's really a process of becoming you know it's not a terminal you know and when you say the rationalization a gazillion they're very tight in there because the rationalization is the process of society's you know spinning off a different say techniques whether theyre the signs of love economics of human sciences of technology or sign political sciences whatever the ways of looking at what you're doing and rather than waiting until some other society comes along exterminate you you look at which a society is doing is they will exchange that was because the process of conscious rationalization rather than than just simply natural selection which means if you get good and then you know you're doing something wrong and this is really

what's what characterize modern societies and increasingly and i this is even more going to the painted this right now are saying things were doing wrong and i think that we're trying to consciously rationalize our society do to be enough to improve the ecology and to minimize the impact of technology to ensure greater economic distribution of you know flip what people want i mean it is interesting that the planning has not itself facto rationalization other words you can carry on a planning process a lot of different environments and simply because you are planning it does not mean that you're rationalizing your environment areas society or anything else and if you can pick up on that a bit as a difference between planning and rationalization of those you can plan question when you can certainly plan irrationally as we've done many many times yeah they're good cause icy planning as thick as the process rationalization i guess what you're saying is that it is noise affected a dozen thought that much always worked i think it the girl oh you know what we really want to do is

by planning a meeting planning even the word planning us probably fairly modern kind of activity where you say well when you have a five year plan to improve or economists are worried the courts la times that the planning techniques to the people it into iraq that together and what they should be doing so it doesn't really work that i think ideally there were planning is all about this is that the plan at a future plan we recognize there is not only a pass but there is also a future in us as i think a modern conception man but some recognition that there's a future is to suggest that the future is probably different from the presence of the past were as a meal of the cultures the rate of change was so slow is to be virtually imperceptible so whether the future was really irrelevant so that now we recognize things are changing very fast in population you know because of the technology they were living on the population is escalating very rapidly and so we have to really plan have to rationalize our resources and our population our human settlements and so on the concept that you mention of the

takeoff of a culture in a new direction as an example you talk about the move away from a purely agricultural society into industry society insight the elements required for this finally over the threshold and if we can talk about that just a little bit perhaps we didn't mention the threshold parameters required various kinds of cultural changes one thing that's interesting that your son might touch on is that you claim that the ancient civilizations were unable to sustain growth in other words i never they were able to take off when if you could expand on a thesis right well the first of these stages i mentioned four billion of the rostow was as a you know a small book out on the five stages of economic growth and he has a divided state is i think ever useful in not only as miss descriptive descriptors of economic growth you know from a sort of a takeoff point you know we were new ideas began to take home and where they were because of the new economy that

the that the economy of the car culture takes office a move rapidly to a new level of productivity sales are really his concepts and i think that really applied because of course the whole civilizations based on the economy and that's that's how the thing takes off and moves to have a mass consumption phase which is the kind of thing that were getting into and he identified he gets very specific years we see in this book and lived like england was probably the first to get into the takeoff age but actually the united states kind of forged by so quickly that it got into the era of mass high mass consumption as he called it probably more quickly than in the past and that that point but in terms of recognizing this is the broad history to lead a listener and the problems of maintaining economic growth records they're just simply achieving real economic growth in the ancient civilization i mean this is the whole key due to what happened and why we have a modern revolution in this modern cultural issue i was struck ten fifteen years

ago as recent history are struck by the fact that all of the great prophet jesus in today you know and no loud say in an muhammad ali's people came within about a thousand years of one another you know five hundred years before nafta christ all these profits seem to have risen on the first of the world's must be the hand of god and it's kind of weird the lawyer must different back then and all its profits but actually really is not hard to save this kind of an economic determinism explanation if you don't mind those crimes simply the economic life on a worldwide worldwide basis at that at that point then you know we'd reached a great the great deal of international interchange of people were producing oz like the great a full blown neolithic good economy was working on a fairly worldwide basis by we're widening around the mediterranean because most of the rest the world still do is paleo with that kind of time but there in that

your own in that place because you could be exposed because you know any bright person that they might travel a little bit recently hear stories of that time could see that there are many other civilizations going on in that they had different guards they have different poems and so while one might accept a great deal of totalitarian repression and his own culture in which are ninety eight percent of the people had virtually nothing and two percent on everything and everyone else was that we were two percent and one could readily acknowledged that was that was that the way god wanted to be in his infinite wisdom if one saw that the same thing for the culture next door and that his god was just a figment of their imagination sent one didn't believe in those other gods all of a sudden one would become aware of the fact that virtually every civilization had the same thing where everyone is being exploited and crumbled all over him it was really a very sad state of affairs vikings are so bad that they would have a dark age and that would have a depression like we didn't have a real dark age where they didn't even write anything for a couple centuries so they're really amazing back then i mean what happened simply was that

jesus and booed and always obey recently very good social critics and i said well you know it doesn't make much sense to buy your salvation i mean it usually make money by traveling over the people's bones it's not very is not really very good and i said that then they still they were being inspired by god and david the way really are today is that every individual has this is equal in the sight of god and the only way to attain salvation is by doing that and this is kind of a really revolutionary thing of course lot people bought that alliance for thinking says radical thanks bye durham a siege really planted in a way and i think that what happened was that our modern revolution really should've happened about a century about a millennium earlier than to say about five hundred years before christ the greek said that you know the science and the savvy in the and really the technology if you will to sleep in a moderately said the things that that approximated steam engines they had below you know pumps and so forth and they had you know good mental technology they're all ready to go but the problem the whole basic problem was that people didn't matter you could

always going by slave so why should anybody capitalized as they invest money to produce mechanisms to use technology to do a job you know to make a steam engine to do some work to do to grind up to the week or something when he could hire people off the street are higher up people or cochran other lands brought into slaves of the labor the labor component was there was dirt cheap it is gets plays for nothing so there was really no incentive to make this technological revolution what happened was you know the words of jesus will probably ten of song came undone in the thousand years or half a half thousand five hundred years or so after jesus died i would say the four thousand years of popular year one thousand these ideas began to take all and so you have this this kind of international christianity gang by the year one thousand were people really believed that each man had individual word that was actually written in the papers and you know that was the thing so that they're in a time after one thousand he had the

mac mccarter and you had the time of sir thomas more was writing about how bad things were actually had a very prevalent ideology a worldwide ideology as it were in the north atlantic that the people were worthwhile in the new world and that produced a mac mccarter whereby an entrepreneur could could do something in this mine introduce something mccain couldn't take away from his unit because the other people that they recognize certain values with the you know with the idea of the gentry saying that these humanist foundations were necessary for technological revolution to take one thousand one thing that the critical element in the third stage of technological and the third revolution as it were the critical element was ideology and that is that the ideology now made it such that a man could invest he could try to develop something a mccain couldn't simply walk in and take it away at the same time if he was going to invest in trying to produce something and sell it on the free market yet is labor he could not simply take labor out of the jails and off the streets he had to pay people that was very pittance of course at the time that he had to pay a certain amount of

money in order to get this work done so there's a course gave gave him the incentive would that there was that was demanded that time for that so that was the incentive to produce times because of intense worldwide empire they're spread all over there was a lot of incentive for fear that will produce good so it made sense to find more efficient ways to do things more efficient ways to pump water out of out of a hole in the ground in order to to do your mining whatever he had to do and did you have to pay people like if someone could joey waved a little more cheaply you know abide by making a steam machine of some sort would you didn't so that's really what happened i think that the market was there and that the you know that there was reason to capitalize rather than simply using cheap labor and that that was really set set the stage for the development of much more sophisticated technology to get work i think we're seeing a new kind of humanist revolution now with the failure of the old religions there are new ideas developing sometimes expressed by the youth culture you think that this might cause a new kind of technological revolution for example or perhaps what

will require a new kind of technological revolution and kind of revolution in society yeah i think that the real revolution and that's in that sense it's a forest and that is a revolution i don't see it as a revolution of the same magnitude as the so called industrial revolution which you know i asked him to call a third more modern you know total called for ruin i think that they need the impetus and that they you know that the va claims and then there are the force that's being presented by the youth culture is such as to give a tremendous impetus to process it's been going on for quite a while and that is this process of of the diffusion and not only of the fusion of political freedom which only in a labor unions have a great deal to do with accelerating that but the diffusion of well i mean the you know young people are called of people in india are starving and dying and answered as a power blog you know what for the first time in history there was a lot of young people are all aware of one of three televisions so they act as a power bloc on they don't get caught that individually as we always did we say well we're withdrawing have

to live with it all of a sudden there's one voice there standing up and saying what six or eight has called this technological the fusion let's see that everyone gets at least enough to eat and maybe a simple car instead of a few people i mean these very fancy and you know ridiculous cars that you see on the street and then very expensive homes their condition while a lot of people in india know in the shadow of the railroad station downtown or store and that's that's insane not see that everyone has at least a nice place to layer which is a form of that was for the fusion the mend it or maybe a car but the more reasonable and better distribution i think the real revolution of things really no impetus to the revolution in jordan on for a couple centuries i think the information revolution that we're having the cyber that it got explosion that we're having made it may make it possible to actually be able to defuse the technology even better yeah i think that's that's the powerful the

sport of a powerful impetus and that is that you know because of the new technological the the information technology of this modern revolution of this modern technology is such that people can watch television in africa are you know we can watch a guy walk around in the movement and watched things simultaneously and so i think this is a tremendous impetus to you on a worldwide scale to recognize that we're you know we're sort of global villages they say and that we're all having the same planet if we don't if we don't sort of give away the goods or share the goods a little better half better economic of diffusion the dishes can be more infighting and it doesn't make any sense for a small handful people to be owning most of the world's resources while everyone else was starving and when you have universal worldwide communications says she's talked to go before the fight ron i'm afraid we've run out of time and we've i think we've covered well be philosophical parts of your book that we haven't had all gone into some of the specific projects our capital projects in which witcher interested non affected by to come back next

week and talk about that i'd be delighted today on this land is your land we've been talking with ronald b adams mr adams is a research consultant here in new york and he's currently working on a book concerning technology in urban form we've talked today about the philosophical concepts involved in developing technologies and next week we will go into the specific projects that mr adams has been concerned with you've been listening to continuing analysis of laughter land is your land and this land in milan

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