Dr. E. F. Schumacher: Author of the Book Small is Beautiful

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Compare his feat to what our society—with its tremendous GNP and overwhelming technology—chooses to build: intercontinental bombers and nuclear bombs and moon rockets. I've tried to imagine what it would be like to find a statue of the architect opposite one of the new high-rise office buildings now going up in London. It would probably say, "This is Mr. R.W. Smith, member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who—instructed by the Greater London Council to create an office block of such superlative cheapness per square toot that no human genius can ever underbid it-on account of his superb endowment with computers, proved equal to this mean task."

We have, you see, in a way advanced into hell. We have become a society rich in means but poor in purpose . . . and I do indeed think it worthwhile to change that situation.

PLOWBOY: Yes, Dr. Schumacher, but you know as well as I do that the average Joe doesn't care a whit about "culture". He's living in a hell of his own. He's got a family to feed and he hates his job and he's worried about tomorrow. What would the changes you propose do for him ?

SCHUMACHER: They should improve his life rather dramatically. I'm quite convinced that our prevailing attitude that work is somehow a hateful thing is directly attributable to the fact that we have, indeed, made it a hateful thing.

Human beings have both brains and hands and enjoy nothing more than being creatively and usefully productive, rendering service, and acting in accordance with their moral impulses. Unfortunately, modern technology increasingly frustrates them in fulfilling all three of these very basic needs. It is most successful in reducing and eliminating the skillful, productive work that human hands can do. It buries individuals in giant corporations and organizations where they have less and less chance to render direct, face-to-face service to their fellow brothers and sisters. And the very rules necessary for the operation of these giant organizations thwart their workers' moral impulses . . . increasingly cause them to say, "I'm sorry. I know what I'm doing isn't quite right, but these are my instructions."

I believe that a gentler technology—a technology with a human face—could once again take control of work away from the machines and put it back into the hands of the average worker. This should give Joe a great deal of satisfaction and make him very confident about his future.

PLOWBOY: I'm afraid that some people are going to be frightened of your ideas for taking control of work "away from the machines" and putting it "back into the hands of the average worker". That sounds very much as if you're advocating the overthrow of all modern advances in favor of a return to some sort of difficult and primitive hand labor.

SCHUMACHER: Not at all! I'm talking only of returning our society to a human scale . . . of putting people in charge of their own destinies once more. I'm talking about overthrowing the machine in favor of the tool. And I do make this distinction between machines and tools:

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