220 Week 1. Summary of Main Arguments. Communications & Media Essay

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Summary of Main Arguments
The “Cultural Preparation” of Lewis Mumford on “Technics and Civilization” presents to its audience the history of machines and how it has affected civilization prior to the occurrence of the televisions, computers, or the internet. His analysis and explanation involve science as much as it involved philosophy, arts, and even cultural history. Lewis Mumford was able to relate the origins of the machine to the effects of these discoveries to the civilization, dating back to the Middle Ages instead of the Industrial Revolution, where the advancements and “industrialization” were known to take place. His main point was that it was not the machines that dictated the industrially-driven economy but the people of the society. The people with their economic, moral, and political decisions are the ones that led the economy to its development. The emergence and development of machines were presented by Lewis Mumford in a more humanistic approach and analysis putting it from a social point of view, allowing a perspective of seeing its cultural contributions to civilization. As stated in the writings of Lewis Mumford, “The unwillingness to accept the natural environment as a fixed and final condition of man’s existence had always contributed both to his art and his technics.” (44)
Lewis Mumford was able to tackle his analysis in important key points describing the history of machines in a way that is understandable by his readers. These areas are time connecting it to tools and money, space, capitalism, factual analyses instead of tales and fables, animism as a blockage, magic, social control, objectivity, duty to invent, and expectations. He has considered various aspects of treating the subject matter in a holistic manner.
Another reading material by Felix Guattari with the title, “On Machines” focuses on the concept of machines. In the introduction there is a discussion regarding how machines are damaging and are associated with catastrophe in modern history, enabling the author to go back to primitive times. He discusses the ontogeny of a machine, as well as its phylogenetic dimension. Similar to the work of Lewis Mumford, Felix Guattari also analyzes the machine in a philosophical and social approach. The concept of machines is not just focused on the technicalities and its materials but also to a broader concept which can even be related to living beings. The relationship of two concepts that can be related to machines is allopoiesis and autopoiesis which he describes as although contrasting actually have adjacent natures. Another concept presented by Felix Guattari is a machine’s proto-subjectivity and proto-biology involving the concept of finitude, birth, and death to its surroundings as well as to its own self.
Altogether, these concepts somehow discuss how each factor and element affect each other including the development and evolution of machines as time goes by. The essence of machines is said to be linked to its procedures, elements, uniqueness, and functions. “What is it, then, that makes our state phenom...