“In the idea of the faceless Imperson, technology conceals a powerful dream, the dream of not being like anything, of being nothing created. Natural forms all suggest comparison, but technical ones usually do not, so a device like a typewriter has a very decided identity but an unplaceable one. Like higher organisms, machines cover complexity with simplicity, and we forget what is inside a handpump or how typewriter linkage works, even forget that anything is there. They no longer have insides; their work is invisible and they are simply ideas, functions, powers.”
(Robert Harbison, Eccentric Spaces, p. 39.)
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