Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodesassumptions about the nature of our reality, the "pattern" in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.

Every century or so, fundamental changes in the nature of consumption create new demand patterns that existing enterprises can't meet.

The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.

Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Laborwas toil, distress, trouble, fatigue--an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.

Computerization brings about an essential change in the way the worker can know the world and, with it, a crisis of confidence inthe possibility of certain knowledge.

As information technology restructures the work situation, it abstracts thought from action.