The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 63

Max Weber. Essay in Sociology. Edited and translated by H.H.

Gerth and C. Wright Mills. London: Oxford University Press, 1946.

In this cla.s.sical theory of bureaucracy, the author saw its roots in the cultural traditions of Western rationalism. As such, it is characterized by impersonal relations, hierarchy, and specialization.

R. Chackerian, G. Abcarian. Bureaucratic Power in Society.

Chicago: Nelson Hall, Inc., 1984.

B.C. Smith. Bureaucracy and Political Power. Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, Ltd., 1988.

The author argues that "Bureaucracy is a political phenomenon"

(p. ix), not a mere administrative occurrence.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Bureaucracy and Democracy. A Political Dilemma. London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.

George C. Roche. America by the Throat: The Stranglehold of Federal Bureaucracy. Old Greenwich CT: Devin Adair, 1983.

Eugene Lewis. American Politics in a Bureaucratic Age: Citizens, Const.i.tuents, Clients, and Victims. Cambridge MA: Winthrop Publishers, 1977.

Michael Hanben and Ronda Hanben. Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. A Netbook.

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106, June, 1996

Michael J. A. Howe, The Strange Feats of Idiots Savants, in Fragments of Genius, London/New York: Routledge, 1989.

"'Idiots savants' is the term that has most frequently been used to designate mentally handicapped individuals who are capable of outstanding achievements at particular tasks" (p. 5). He also mentions alternative labels: talented imbecile, parament, talented ament, r.e.t.a.r.ded savant, schizophrenic savant, autistic savant. Among the examples he gives: A 14-year old Chinese who could give the exact page for any Chinese character in a 400-page dictionary; a 23-year old woman hardly able to speak (her mental age was a.s.sessed at 2 years, 9 months), with no musical instruction, who could play on the piano a piece of music that a person around her might hum or play; a subject who knew all distances between towns in the USA and could list all hotels and number of rooms available; a person who knew Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address but could not, after weeks of cla.s.ses on the subject, say who Lincoln was or what the speech means.

In The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1920), Henry Adams presented a logarithmic curve of the acceleration of history. In 1909, Adams noted that between 1800 and 1900, the speed of events increased 1,000 times.

Gerard Piel. The Acceleration of History. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1972.

Nicolas Rashevsky. Looking at History through Mathematics.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.