[M_Grey]

"...The blind forces of urbanization, flowing along the lines of least resistance, show no aptitude for creating an urban and industrial pattern that will be stable, self-sustaining, and self-renewing. On the contrary, as congestion thickens and expansion widens, both the urban and the rural landscape undergo defacement and degradation, while the unprofitable investments in the remedies…serve only to promote more of the blight and disorder they seek to palliate." (Mumford)

[johnfjacobi]

This article reminded me a lot of stuff written by Mumford, Jacques Ellul, and even Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber). Their stuff is worth reading.

Industrial Society and Its Future http://wildism.org/rca/items/show/13

Also Ellul's The Technological Society

[dredmorbius]

Mumford and Ellul are among the references in Vaclav Smil's Energy in World History, which I'm just completing. It came out in 1994, too early for Kaczynski's Manifesto (1995), but it wouldn't surprise me if he references it in later works (I've not yet checked).

Bill Joy cites Kaczynski in his own Wired 2000 essay, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us".

[M_Grey]

Thanks for the link, I haven't read that in full, just parts.