When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day, and only on Sundays and holidays went out and played with our brothers. Once my father said: "The children must learn to ride. Send them to the riding-school!" I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked: "May I, too, learn to ride?" My father said: "You will fall down." I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried. My father said: "All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't cry when you fall off. He who does not once fall down from a horse will not learn to ride." When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to the riding-school. We entered by a large porch, and from the large porch went to a smaller one. Beyond the porch was a very large room: instead of a floor it had sand. And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such boys as we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school was not very light, and there was a smell of horses,...
Lewis Herber [Murray Bookchin] Note: This is the final part of a two-part article on the technological bases of freedom. The first part (Anarchos n. 2) examined the technological limitations of the previous century and their influence on revolutionary theory. An economy anchored technologically in scarcity, it was shown, circumscribed the range of social ideas and tended to subvert revolutionary concepts of freedom. These limitations were compared with the potentialities of technology today -- the substitution of invention by design, the open end in technological development, the emergence of cybernetic devices, the prospect of reducing toil to a near vanishing point. The article examined the possibility of making qualitative changes in the... (From : Anarchy Archives.)