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The concept of man as a thinker has become outmoded in American technological society, Andre Siegfried, Bacon Exchange Professor and Member of the French Academy, said yesterday.
"Man today is a cog in an immense industrial system," Siegfried stated. "In both the process and administration of production, technique has replaced thinking. The hugeness of industry makes it impossible for any one man to manage a corporation and the result has been control by an unthinking bureaucracy."
Siegfried predicted that the next step in this "dehumanization of society" would be the replacement of the white collar administrative worker by electronic machines. At the same time the machine will take over the process of production, depriving the unskilled and semi-skilled worker of his job.
Europe alone has retained the ideal of the superiority of the thinking man, Siegfried said. It is Europe's duty to achieve a balance between technology and ideas, he added.
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