2011
11. 29
The Signs of a Rational Enjoyment of the Machine -- But precisely because there are so many physical organs, and because so many parts of our environment compete constantly for our attention, we need to guard ourselves against the fatigue of dealing with too many objects or being stimulated unnecessarily by their presence, as we perform the numerous offices they impose. Hence a simplification of the externals of the mechanical world is almost a prerequisite for dealing with its internal complications. To reduce the constant succession of stimuli, the environment itself must be made as neutral as possible. This, again, is partly in opposition to the principle of many handicraft arts, where the effort is to hold the eye, to give the mind something to play with, to claim a special attention for itself. So that if the canon of economy and the respect for function were not rooted in modern technics, it would have to be derived from our psychological reaction to the machine: only by aesthetically observing these principles can the chaos of stimuli be reduced to the point of effective assimilation.
Without standardization, without repetition, without the neutralizing effect of habit, our mechanical environment might be, by reason of its tempo and its continuous impact, be too formidable... the machine has thus, in its aesthetic manifestations, something of the same effect that a conventional code of manners has in social intercourse: it removes the strain of contact and adjustment. The standardization of manners is a psychological shock-absorber... those who complain about the standardization of the machine are used to thinking of variations in terms of gross changes in pattern and structure, such as those that take place between totally different cultures or generations, whereas one of the signs of the rational enjoyment of the machine and the machine environment is to be concerned with much smaller differences and to react sensitively to them. (Mumford, Technics and Civilization -- emphasis mine)
