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

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.

Technology represents intelligence systematically applied to the problem of the body. It functions to amplify and surpass the organic limits of the body; it compensates for the body's fragility and vulnerability.

Skilled workers historically have been ambivalent toward automation, knowing that the bodies it would augment or replace were theoccasion for both their pain and their power.

Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.

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

It looks like the age of the mass is behind us and the age of the individual is upon us. The chasm that now exists between new people and old organizations is destroying economic value and inhibiting the emergence of a new chapter of capitalism aligned with the needs of this new society. The new purpose of commerce is to provide the tools, platforms, and relationships, digital or human, that enable individuals to live the lives they choose.