Man has become a kind of prosthetic God
1930 (Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag). Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis in Vienna, on tools and machines as extensions of human organs in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and Its Discontents), 1930. Translated from German.
More from Sigmund Freud · AI and philosophy · AI and culture · Before ChatGPT
Who else?
What it refers to: Tools such as motors, ships, aircraft, spectacles, telescopes, cameras and telephones, through which humans perfect their organs and come close to the ideal they placed in their gods.
Other voices
- “Organs of the human brain, created by the human hand” Karl Marx,
- “Contemporary technology driven by AI has resurrected the ancient human impulse to play God” Vinay Samuel,
- “Men have become the tools of their tools” Henry David Thoreau,
- “The lord of the world becomes the slave of the machine” Oswald Spengler,
- “People can be equally enslaved by their tools” Ivan Illich,
- “The automaton is the last step” Lewis Mumford,










