Overwhelmed by the miraculous potentialities of the machine, our human greed has interfered with the biological cycle of human companionship which keeps the life of a community healthy.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how human greed disrupts authentic relationships within a community due to the overwhelming impact of technology.
Walter Gropius expresses concern about the impact of technology on human relationships. He suggests that the miraculous capabilities of machines, when combined with human greed, can disrupt the natural cycle of companionship and community, leading to unhealthy societal dynamics. This reflects a warning about the potential for technology to distance us from each other rather than bringing us closer together.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of technology on society, I might say this quote to emphasize the importance of maintaining personal connections.
The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman. ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.
The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft.
Architecture begins where engineering ends.
Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.
Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.
Every time you write an email, it is in the public domain. There are all these ways where security is not as good as people believe.
The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.
Cyberspace is colonising what we used to think of as the real world. I think that our grandchildren will probably regard the distinction we make between what we call the real world and what they think of as simply the world as the quaintest and most incomprehensible thing about us.
Digital presentation is just television in public; we're all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen.
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