Excerpt from Welcome to the Machine

We Are Inside (p. 72)

From chapter "The Machine"

What must be grasped about all of this if we are to have any significant chance of altering the course (or rather helping the natural world to alter the course) of our deathly culture is that Bolonkin’s vision has already come to pass. We are already living in the midst of it. Just as it would be a mistake to consider the Panopticon to be only a building of stone and glass and light and dark, it is a mistake to consider machines to be only artifacts made of iron and steel, and computers to be only metal boxes housing silicon chips. They are all much more. The Panopticon is a social arrangement, a way of life, a way of being in the world and relating to the world and to each other. The Machine, too, is a social arrangement, a way of life, a way of being in the world and relating to the world and to each other. And the Computer also is a social arrangement, a way of life, a way of being in the world and relating to the world and to each other. We are inside of the Panopticon, we are inside of the Machine, and we are inside of the Computer.