THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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lacking; the leap from the mail­coach to the train was an incomparably greater change in living conditions than the leap from the train to the aeroplane. And we do not
even need to consider here the hail of bombs beneath which the aeroplane has been encountered by most people and has also possibly transported them, to kingdom
come. The latent Luddism of late capitalism everywhere counteracts the progression of what is Edison­like, although once it has got under way it is not that easy to
stop. On the whole, however, invention will only have real utopia at heart again when an economy directed towards the satisfaction of needs is pursued instead of a
profit economy. When the law of socialism: maximum satisfaction of needs at the level of the highest technology, has finally superseded the law of capitalism: maximum
profit. When consumption is capable of assimilating all products, and technology, regardless of risk and private profitability, is once again given a mandate for boldness,
without any imperialistically promoted demonism.
De­oranization of the machine; atomic energy, non­Euclidean technology
This is all the more likely as another trend is stirring beneath the present crust. Far beyond substitute materials, however much it may lie in their field, namely in that
which is no longer natural, but artificial or all too artificial. The unnatural element already began when men invented the wheel, which is not found on their body. Usually,
as we know, implements and machines arose from imitating parts of the body, the hammer is the fist, the chisel the nail, the saw the row of teeth and so on. But great
progress occurred only when this sort of thing was abandoned, when the machine solved its task with means of its own. The sewing machine does not operate like
sewing by hand, nor the type­setting machine like hand­setting; the aeroplane is not an imitation of a bird, on the contrary its wing is inflexible, and its propeller is not a
wing. Only in the steam­engine and locomotive does a semblance from the old organic series still continue to operate. Hissing, boiling, breathing, with connecting rods
like arms at the side; children playing are thus still induced to imitate locomotives. And how organically familiar the description can still be which Joseph Conrad
bestows on the ship's engine­room in ‘Typhoon’, the pale long flames on the brightly polished metal, the enormous crank­heads emerging from the flooring, and sinking
down again, the big­jointed