"Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo:  not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences."  ~Lewis Mumford (1970)

It is usual to explore how we have created technologies. As students we enjoy examining both the utopian and dystopian visions of man's relationship with our technologies, and computer technologies in particular. In education, we explore how we can use computers to learn various subjects. But what do we learn from engaging with these technologies? Do the interactions make us slaves? do we surrender to the tools?

Cinema, since its beginnings, has been examining the relationship between people and modern technology. For this project, I will focus on ways in which cinema has expressed what we learn from our interactions with machines. In each era, our culture has focused on the relationship between man and machine in a slightly different way, yet all eras share a common theme. We may build machines to extend our humanity, but from our interactions with machines we may also learn how to be more human.

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