Stuart ChaseRezensionen

Published only 2 years after Men & Machines, Chase takes a tour of Mexico in late 1920's. This volume studies many aspects of Mexican culture and economy in relation to the United States. Great reading, insightful. Has special line drawings by Diego Rivera that add value to this must have your economics or world history collection.

Really cool read, published same year as stock market crash of 1929. Must have in your economics library. The black & white woodblock art of WT Murch are really good too. The question of whether or not machines are enslaving man and many other such machine/man issues are discussed from remarkable perspective than anticipates much of the world today, but also holds quaint perspective of yesterday. Very well written and entertaining.

Always some humor in reading mid-twentieth century predictions of the year 2000. Chase has a kind of charming naive faith that certain scientific advances will solve humanity's problems. E.g., fusion will not only solve the energy crisis, it will enable cheap desalinization of seawater thereby also solving any food or water crises. He thinks that moving to electronic money only would eliminate theft. I'm still trying to see how that follows.

The final chapter gives a snapshot of the life of a professor in the year 2000. The world he presents is peaceful but also creepily frightening, kind of like the Ned Flanders Big Brother world from the Treehouse of Horror.

The writing is painfully normative. Everything is through the lens of an entitled upper class white male. I wonder if the systems organization guys that were in the Kennedy administration were fans.

Ik heb het gekocht vanwege de illustraties van Diego Rivera, waarvan 1 gekleurd (voor de titelpagina) en de overige zwart-wit tekeningen.

An early freewheeling exploration of semantics, published not long before WWII. It's a useful and accessible book, in which Chase draws on the works of Alfred Korzybski, C. K. Ogden, I. A. Richards and P. W. Bridgman to present to the general reader a strong case for caution in how we use words. Taking examples from science, economics, politics, philosophy and other spheres of human activity, he shows how meaning and sense can easily be diluted and corrupted, to sometimes catastrophic effect.½

I don’t know if I love this book as much as its original owner. He carried it through Europe in WWII like a Bible. The copy I own is a replacement of the original that he lost, but it was thoroughly read and annotated when I bought it in an old book shop. The original owner’s annotations are almost as interesting as the text.

So now to that: Chase eloquently explains the foundations of semantics. This book helped me understand how much of meaning relies on shared experience, cultural assumptions, and so on. I do love this book.

One of the most influential books in my early life. I remember its opening the window and letting fresh air and sunlight in on much subsequent circular and irrelevant debate from politicians, bosses, and, yes, even a few good friends throughout the rest of my life.

I strongly recommend it, even now, especially for young adults.