#Accelerate, 91–104

Chapter

The Machine Process and the Natural Decay of the Business Enterprise

EXCERPT

The Machine Process

In its bearing on modern life and modern business, the ‘machine process’ means something more comprehensive and less external than a mere aggregate of mechanical appliances for the mediation of human labor. It means that, but it means something more than that. The civil engineer, the mechanical engineer, the navigator, the mining expert, the industrial chemist and mineralogist, the electrician—the work of all these falls within the lines of the modern machine process, as well as the work of the inventor who devises the appliances of the process and that of the mechanician who puts the inventions into effect and oversees their working. The scope of the process is larger than the machine…