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, representing balance, is the official symbol of ''Technocracy, Inc.'']] The Technocracy movement is a Social Movement that started in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s and advocates a form of society where the Welfare of human beings is optimized by means of Scientific Analysis and widespread use of Technology . Today the movement exists as '''''Technocracy Incorporated''''', Authenticity Official Technocracy Incorporated Website stating their authenticity whose members partake in discussion groups and publish quarterly magazines. HISTORY -era town proclaims regular Monday meetings of the local branch of Technocracy. '' Library Of Congress photo.'']] outdoor Auditorium]] The technocracy movement has some of its intellectual origins back in the progressive engineers of the late 19th century and the works of Thorsten Veblen , especially "Engineers and the price system" as well as, to a lesser extent, Scientific Management .1 Early proto-technocratic organisations formed after the First World War ; these included Henry Gantt ’s "The New Machine" and Veblen’s "Soviet of Technicians". These organisations folded after a short time. However, the "Soviet of Technicians" resulted in a series of lectures, which Howard Scott attended;2 he started the Technical Alliance in the winter of 1918 - 1919 . William H. Smyth first used the word "technocracy" to describe a government made up of scientists and engineers in 1919,3 and in the 1920s, it was used to to describe to works of Thorsten Veblen4. The Technical Alliance, composed of mostly Scientist s and Engineer s, started an Energy Survey of the North America n continent near the beginning of the 20th Century . Many of their conclusions gave a scientific background upon which they based their ideas for a new Social Structure . Thorstein Veblen , who wrote '' Theory Of The Leisure Class '' (1899), was a member of the Technical Alliance. After the dissolution of the Technical Alliance, Howard Scott became the founder and leader of a new organization called ''Technocracy Incorporated'', which sought to implement the findings of the Alliance and create a new kind of society. The group was incorporated in the state of New York in 1933 as a Non-profit , non-political, non- Sectarian organization. Led by Scott, then director-in-chief or "Chief Engineer", the organization promoted its goals of educating people about the Alliance's ideas via a North American Lecture tour in 1934, gaining support throughout the Depression years. The precedent document of the Technocracy movement is the Technocracy Study Course . The organization has published several magazines throughout its history, including the ''The Technocrat'', ''The Northwest Technocrat'' and ''Technocracy Digest'', it currently publishes the ''North American Technocrat''5 and the movement still continues after more than 70 years of history (for a more complete list of past publications see here {Link without Title} ). One of the most notable members of the movement was M. King Hubbert , a Geophysicist who proposed the theory which has become known as the Hubbert Peak or '' Peak Oil ''. The standard unit for the organization is the chartered Section, consisting of at least fifty members. At Technocracy's height in popularity, many cities contained more than one Section, sometimes as many as a dozen or more. These sections undertook the majority of Technocracy's work, including the research that continued after the Technical Alliance. The organization receives its funds entirely from dues and donations from its members. Because of the goal of abolishing political controls, membership is open to any citizen of North America except Politician s. Technocracy's Continental Headquarters ("CHQ") was originally situated in New York . It has moved several times through its history, and is currently located in Ferndale, Washington . European movement symbol adopted by NET]] In 2005, a group of Europeans, inspired by Technocracy, decided to use some of the ideas of North American Technocracy in ). European Technocracy Model NET's statement of differences between North American and European Technocracy The organisation's goals are aimed at testing the concepts of the Technocracy movement through experimentation and networking. One of the other main differences between European and North American Technocracy is NET's focus and investigation into Decentralised and Ecological methods of resource and information distribution. Sequence of Research Details of NET's Research6. NET was officially registered as an independent Association in Sweden in April 2006. Its provisional headquarters (EHQ) are in Umeå , Sweden . IDEAS AND GOALS showing the ''Functional sequences'' and their relationship to one another.]] The Technocracy movement aims to establish a Zero Growth Socio-economic system based upon Conservation and Abundance as opposed to Scarcity -based economic systems like Capitalism and the system used by Communist State s. A core conclusion reached by the Technocracy movement is that a Price System , or any system based on scarcity, is an illogical means of distribution in our technologically advanced world. Technocracy sees established economic, political, and administrative forms as relics of a traditional past. Technocrats argue that developments in -based system to make economic decisions. As opposed to economists, who define and Hunger are due to faulty economics and improper use of technology. They frequently point out that the current price system is wasteful as it utilizes as many resources as possible but can only create scarce products (excludable and rival Private Goods ). Technocrats argue that full use of our technology and resources should be able to produce an abundance. Technocrats claim that the price system entails a severe lack of Purchasing Power , and has been propped up by wasteful tactics, major patches to the economic system, and increasingly huge amounts of debt, which began to increase exponentially after 1930 . This debt includes the U.S. National Debt , Mortgage s (see Global Debt ), long term debt, Credit Debt , and the growing Stock Market . Technocrats see growing debt as a threat to the stability of capitalism. Technocrats claim that the price system will eventually fail, in which case the movement hopes to have educated enough of the populace in order to peaceably make changes to the economic structure and create a Technate . An alternative to money: Energy accounting with John Gregory at Technocracy Inc. Continental Headquarters (CHQ), then in Rushland, PA . Background maps show the proposed area of the Technate overlaid with the Continental Hydrology.]] Energy Accounting is a hypothetical system of distribution, which would record the Energy used to produce and distribute goods and services consumed by citizens in a Technate . The units of this accounting system would be known as '''Energy Credits''', '''Energy Certificates''', or simply '''Energy Units''', these would replace Money in a Technate, but unlike traditional money or Currencies , energy units could not be saved or earned, only distributed evenly among a populace. The amount of energy given to each citizen would be calculated by determining the total productive capacity of the technate and dividing it equally. The Energy credits or certificates, themselves would probably not have to be physically used by the populace, as the system would be computerised. In energy accounting the Technate would use information of natural resources, industrial capacity and citizen’s purchasing habits to determine how much of any good or service was being consumed by the populace, so that it could match Production with Consumption . Some reasons given for the use of Energy Accounting are, to ensure the highest possible standard of living, as well as ; it is a way to distribute an Abundance and track Demand . Everyone would receive an equal, abundant (i.e. far more than they need), amount of energy. Technocrats predict that at today's rates of Energy Conversion , no person will rationally be able to spend all their energy units. The North American Technate The North American Technate is a design and plan to transform North America into a Technocratic society after the collapse of the Price System . The plan includes using Canada 's rich deposits of Mineral s and Hydro-electric Power as a complement to the United States's Industrial and Agricultural capacity (Many of the details of this plan are presented in the Technocracy Study Course). The North America Technate would be composed of all of North America , Central America , the Caribbean , parts of South America and Greenland , encompassing some 30 modern nations (as well as numerous Non-Self-Governing Territories ). If the Technate were setup today, it would contain nearly 600 million citizens and its total Land Area would be over 26 million square km (making it the Largest Nation On Earth ). Its territorial claims would stretch from the North Pole in the north, to the Equator in the south and from the Caribbean in the west, to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean , to the east. Urbanates: A technocratic replacement for cities Once a technate has been established, the Technocracy movement believes that it should proceed to construct an entirely new form of living environment called Urbanate s. An Urbanate is essentially an assembly of buildings where people live and work. These places would have all the facilities needed for a community, including schools, hospitals, shopping malls, Waste Management and Recycling facilities, sports centres, and public areas. Technocrats wish Urbanates to be something akin to resorts, designed to give each citizen the highest standard of living possible. Getting around in an Urbanate would be inherently easy and efficient. Every kind of major facility would be placed within walking distance of a housing complex, eliminating the need for cars. Urbanates would be connected via a continent-wide transportation network envisioned by Technocracy, which would involve a High-speed Rail network linking every Urbanate, the Continental Hydrology (a massive Canal network), and Air Transport . These systems would also be connected to the Technate’s Industrial sites for easy transport of goods to consumers, and to all recreational and vacation areas of the continent. The reason given by the Technocracy movement for all this ambitious restructuring of urban life is that modern Cities are often extremely Poorly Planned and built in a haphazard way leading to major inefficiencies, Waste , and large numbers of Social and environmental problems. Technocrats believe that rather than trying to solve all these problems within the framework of existing cities, it is best to start with a clean slate and construct Urbanates. Technocrats propose that all of the old cities in the technate should be gradually abandoned and "mined" for their resources. This would involve Recycling resources (e.g. Steel , Concrete , Glass , Plastic s, etc.), which would then go into building the Urbanates, thus reducing the need to extract and process new materials and lessen environmental damage. Though some buildings (or perhaps whole areas of the old cities) that are of historical or cultural importance, would likely be kept and preserved as a type of outdoor Museum s. CRITICISMS OF THE MOVEMENT The movement is too obscure to attract much criticism, however, Technocrats themselves would argue that those in power, politicians and heads of corporations, are a form of organized opposition. The movement claims that this opposition has helped spread a negative connotation to the term ''technocracy'' and the ideas associated with it. Critics make the following claims regarding technocracy:
, a Technocracy Inc. publication.]] TECHNOCRACY INCORPORATED PUBLICATIONS FURTHER READING Books on the early history of the Technocracy movement: Elsner's account is from a sociological perspective. Akin's book is much more detailed, though deals mostly with the intellectual history of the movement. Neither book is terribly critical of the movement, though they both agree that the Technocrats' influence on American history has been negligible. The authors argue that Technocracy gained a fair amount of national press attention in the midst of the Great Depression, but their time in the spotlight lasted scarcely a year, from 1932 - 33 . Technocracy in fiction Science Fiction writer Howard Waldrop 's short story "You Could Go Home Again" postulates an Alternate History where a technocratic government came to power in the United States, resulting in many historical differences, including World War II having never happened. However, Waldrop never intended for the story to be an accurate depiction of Technocracy, instead only borrowing elements from it as a backdrop for his story. The United Federation Of Planets in Gene Roddenberry 's '' Star Trek '' franchise bears some similarity to a Technocratic society. Although its economics are rarely discussed in detail, the Federation is almost certainly some form of Post Scarcity , moneyless society. Kim Stanley Robinson 's Mars Trilogy describes the development of a highly automated society whose economy was based on caloric input/output and had few materials valued based on their scarcity, thus bearing some similarities to Technocratic ideas. Satirical treatments The Technocracy movement was the subject of several Satire s in the 1930s. A special notable "Technocracy Number" of ''Judge'' humor magazine, illustrated by Dr. Seuss , made fun of Technocracy, Inc. and featured satirical rhymes at the expense of Frederick Soddy . In a 1933 Flip The Frog cartoon, '' Techno-Cracked '', Flip builds a robot to work for him and gets a lesson in Unintended Consequence s. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS REFERENCES |
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