On Sun, 1 Feb 1998, Blarne Flinkard wrote:

> If anyone knows the colleague to whom Chomsky refers to below I'd be
> appreciative if he let me know who it is. Thanks and enjoy.

In _Class War: The Attack on Working People_ track 11. "Technology as a
Weapon" (also available at http://www.worldmedia.com/archive/index.html)
Noam Chomsky says, "The topic [of automation] was studied in depth by
David Noble here [at MIT]--no longer here, incidentally...He's teaching in
Canada now."

In going to amazon.com and looking up David F. Noble, I found the
following:

About David F. Noble: Currently Professor of History at Toronto's York
University, David Noble is author of:

_America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate
Capitalism_ (1979)

_Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation_ (1986)

_Progress Without People: Automation and Job Killing in a Market Society_
(1991)

_Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of
Resistance_ (1991)

_Smash Machines Not People: Fighting the Management Myth of Progress_
(1991)

_A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science_
(1992)

>From Kirkus Reviews, 03/15/92:
Noble challenges the commonly held assumption that modern science
developed in opposition to an authoritarian Church, claiming instead that
the celibate, male- dominated Catholic tradition provided both support and
inspiration for the scientific tradition that would virtually supplant
it--a provocative thesis backed by a painstakingly detailed history.
Christianity originated as a potentially egalitarian religion, Noble
says--but almost from the beginning, he explains, women were forced to
struggle against political and cultural forces aimed at pushing them out
of the spiritual mainstream and into the home. Though occasional early
heretical movements supporting spiritual unity between the sexes--as well
as the undeniable power of a wealthy, female, medieval elite--exerted some
counterforce to the Church's generally anti-female development, the 12th
century saw the virtual end of fully empowered female spiritual counselors
and a great emphasis on male clerical celibacy. It was this male-
dominated, misogynistic Church, then, that established the European
colleges from which modern science sprang--colleges in which the pursuit
of knowledge was considered a sacred act, scholars were treated as a kind
of monk, celibacy was encouraged, and women were categorically excluded.
These origins have led to today's curiously anomalous scientific
priesthood in which, Noble says, women continue to be discriminated
against, dismissed, and even supplanted as a species (through the
development of artificial insemination, robot technology, and other forms
of artificial creation)--an unnatural legacy in need of profound revision.
Both Noble and Joseph Schwartz (The Creative Moment, reviewed below)
describe the world of modern science as an insulated, priestly, and
discriminatory culture--but their explanations of how and why it got that
way (and particularly their antithetical depictions of Galileo and Newton)
remain strikingly and intriguingly opposed.

Synopsis:
Noble provides the first full-scale investigation of the origins and
implications of the masculine culture of Western science and technology
and, in the process, offers some surprising revelations. Essential reading
for anyone concerned not only with the world of science, but about the
world that science has made.

Card catalog description:
In this groundbreaking work of history, David Noble examines the origins
and implications of the masculine culture of Western science and
technology. He begins by asking why women have figured so little in the
development of science, and then proceeds--in a fascinating and radical
analysis--to trace their absence to a deep-rooted legacy of the
male-dominated Western religious community. He shows how over the last
thousand years science and the practices and institutions of higher
learning were dominated by Christian clerics, whose ascetic culture from
the late medieval period militated against the inclusion of women in
scientific enterprise. He further demonstrates how the attitudes that took
hold then remained more or less intact through the Reformation, and still
subtly permeate our thinking despite the secularization of learning. Noble
also describes how during the first millennium and after, women at times
gained amazingly broad intellectual freedom and participated both in
clerical activities and in scholarly pursuits. But, as Noble shows, these
episodic forays occurred only in the wake of anticlerical movements within
the church and without. He suggests finally an impulse toward
"defeminization" at the core of the modern scientific and technological
enterprise as it works to wrest from one-half of humanity its part in
production (the Industrial Revolution's male appropriation of labor) and
reproduction (the millennium-old quest for the artificial womb). An
important book that profoundly examines how the culture of Western science
came to be a world without women. --This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Pt. 1. A World with Women
       1. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives
       2. Revivals
Pt. 2. A World Without Women
       3. Saints: The Ascent of Clerical Asceticism
       4. Fathers: Patristic Anxiety to Papal Agenda
       5. Brothers: The Militarization of Monasticism
       6. Priests: The Monasticization of the Church
       7. Bachelors: The Scholastic Cloister
Pt. 3. Science
       8. Revelation in Nature
       9. The Scientific Restoration
       10. Women in a World Without Women
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Permissions Acknowledgments


_Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism_ (1995)

Noam Chomsky:
Progress Without People is a lucid and masterful portrayal of what is
happening in the real world of state-corporate power, and what it means
for the people of the world.

The Catholic Worker:
A fresh account for much of what is going on all around us...[Noble] sheds
light on the new mode of production whose material and ideological basis
gets scant attention elsewhere.

Book Description:
The information highway is barely under construction. The virtual
workplace is still experimental. But their consequences are readily
predictable. Unemployment. Dislocation. A return to nineteenth century
levels of inequality. In this provocative book, David F. Noble argues that
deference to the market and reverence for technology are leading us in the
direction of deskilled work for those who still have jobs and a
generalized global speed-up.


_The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of
Invention_ (1997)

Amazon.com:
The Religion of Technology is equal parts history and polemics. Noble
explores the religious roots of Western technology by linking today's
secular technophilia with the ancient Christian dream of humanity's
redemption. Noble argues that, historically, the most powerful
technological advances (Newtonian physics, the engineering profession,
space exploration) have been driven by explicitly spiritual and humane
ambitions, but that the last several decades have brought a new kind of
technology that is impatient with life and unconcerned with basic human
needs. The Religion of Technology is an authoritative, erudite, and often
persuasive book.

>From Kirkus Reviews, 08/01/97:
Noble argues that the apparent dichotomy between science and religion,
between the physical and the spiritual, is an artifact of recent history.
He examines nearly 2,000 years of Western history to support his thesis.
Noble cites two early impulses behind the urge to advance in science and
technology: the conviction that apocalypse is imminent, and the belief
that increasing human knowledge helps recover knowledge lost in Eden. For
example, Columbus's writings show that he believed the Orinoco to be one
of the rivers of Paradise and expected the End Times to come within a
century or so. Indeed, the metaphor of a return to Eden runs through the
writings of advocates of science, exploration, and technology from the
earliest days. Isaac Newton's religious studies, which seem such a puzzle
to moderns, grew out of his belief that, by understanding the divine
creation, man fulfills God's plan in preparing for the millennium by
perfecting himself. Priestley, Faraday, Clerk-Maxwell, and other giants of
Anglo-American science shared his millenarianism. Evolution, which
decoupled science from religion, led to a restatement of the millenarian
vision as a secular quest for perfection, one that underlies scientific
enterprise from NASA to the Human Genome Project. But, says Noble, without
the religious underpinnings from which it arose, the quest for perfection
leads to technical progress for its own sake--and to Hiroshima, Chernobyl,
and other horrors yet to be unveiled.  Only by demystifying science and by
depriving its practitioners of their quasi-priestly status can we
rehumanize it and turn it again to real human needs. Densely argued and
supported, but well within the grasp of the nontechnical reader, Noble's
thesis is fascinating and in many ways convincing. An important
document--and inevitably a controversial one--in the current debates on
the role of science in society.

Synopsis:
This groundbreaking book turns on its head the cherished idea that
technology and religion are separated by a great divide. Taking a
historical approach, David F. Noble shows that Western technology is
rooted in Christian myths and ancient imaginings, and that there is
actually no fundamental conflict between science and religion.