Encapsulated Man

“Behold the astronaut, fully equipped for duty: a scaly creature, more like an oversized ant than a primate — certainly not a naked god. To survive on the moon he must be encased in an even more heavily insulated garment, and become a kind of faceless ambulatory mummy. While he is hurtling through space the astronaut’s physical existence is purely a function of mass and motion, narrowed down to the pinpoint of acute sentient intelligence demanded by the necessity for coordinating his reactions with the mechanical and electronic apparatus upon which his survival depends. Here is the archetypal proto-model of Post-Historic Man, whose existence from birth to death would be conditioned by the megamachine, and made to conform, as in a space capsule, to the minimal functional requirements by an equally minimal environment - all under remote control.”

Lewis Mumford, _Myth of the Machine, The Pentagon of Power_, 1970

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