ARGUMENTS
245
The Age of Aut>omation,
then, is a kind of technologist's and indus–
trialist's utopia, and, as a utopia, has something to say about the way
people will make their livings, something to say about their education,
'their political organization, their cultural activity, etc. But, unlike most
utopias, this one predicts what tomorrow will be, on the basis of what
Sir Leon has secret access to today. Much of what he predicts for under–
automated Britain has already come to pass in this country and in some
of the other advanced automation countries-Western Germany, France,
Russia, Sweden.
Automation, unhappily, though trying to struggle free of false at–
titudinizing, has itself fallen into Quixotic stances quite out of keeping
with its emphasis on toughness, facts and freedom from ideology. Auto–
mation has a gallery of shadowy villains. It is full of fear that the
public does not understand what it is about, that labor will force
governments to hem automation in, that politicians will move in to
arrest the development unhampered freedom cannot help but bring.
Sir Leon is not as paranoid as most American pushers of automation,
and not at all vulgar. Yet his little book starts out as though it were
an answer to a long misinformed speech against automation. His enemies
he characterizes as "Luddites," a cliche tag no pro-automation spokes–
man can resist. And in his preface to
The Age of Automation
Daniel Bell
tells us to think of those who predict economic difficulties for automa–
tion as "catastrophists."2
What automation as a subject of study so far lacks neither Bagrit
nor Bell provides-a good description of not only what automation is
and does, but how it could affect certain industries if the techniques
available at this moment were put to use. How, for example, does an
automation salesmen
sell
his machines and systems? Not, we can be
sure, by telling a customer, as Sir Leon tells us, that automation "is not
a question of machines replacing men." Not, we can bet, by arguing
the McLuhan line about radar and computers being ways of "extend–
ing man's faculties by machines so that ... they become better men,
more competent men."
In discussing automation, as in discussing Vietnam, one discovers
the EitherlOr in its most virulent form. Asking questions about automa–
tion is taken as a sign of hostility, and the asker is immediately identified
as a Luddite or a catastrophist. The automation non-debate, like the
Vietnam one, turns into a non-dialogue: once someone is isolated as a
2. The category is as neutral and as purely descriptive as Dante's "trim–
mers," say.
