Lewis Mumford
Obituary

Year Published:  1990
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX3850

Abstract: 
Lewis Mumford, the social philosopher and historian died in January at the age of 94. Mumford was known for a wide range of achievements, including his critical writings on planning and on technology. On technology, he once said that "It is not the apparatus of the machine that's wrong, but the organized cult of machinery that is really evil. It is a monster that can transform man into a passive, purposeless animal. It can run away from him. He said that he feared that a "dominant minority" which wielded power through its control of science and technology, would set in motion forces for the creation of a "uniform, all-enveloping superplanetary structure, designed for automatic operation", something he called the "megamachine". Mumford was one of the first modern city planners, and made his early reputation in that field. He opposed the building of large expressway systems as destructive of city life. Mumford's books included The City in History, The Story of Utopias, Technics and Civilization, Green Memories, The Myth of the Machine, and The Highway and the City.