Word: slaving
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Actually, attempts to disobey a law in support of some larger cause are not at all unknown in American history. The Underground Railroad before the Civil War was clearly designed to side-track the Fugitive Slave Law and speed escaping slaves to Canada. Suffragettes, too, were willing to break ordinance after ordinance to extend the vote...
...also the most flexible. Then part singing was invented, and in time the singer's voice became corseted by custom into one of six categories: soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass. Like any set of muscles restricted to less than full capabilities, the human voice became the slave of the restriction. Individuals once even went to such extremes as castration to break out,* but occasionally a voice comes along that needs no adjustment to make musical news: the thrilling voice of Soprano Lucrezia Agujari, which rose almost three octaves from middle D; the freak voice of the 19th...
...when automation was just getting under way, Norbert Wiener, M.I.T. mathematics professor and pioneer in the development of automated machines, forecast that automation would reduce wage earners to "slave labor," and bring on an economic crash that would make "the Depression of the '30s seem a pleasant joke." Now Wiener has changed his mind: man is becoming automation's master, not its slave. He cheerfully concedes that automation is "increasing man's leisure, enriching his spiritual life...
According to Communist theory, all the forced labor workers are "voluntary," and the cadres supervising the slave labor always use high-sounding, almost loving words, to describe their charges. Those who die of exposure and overwork are eulogized as "dead heroes." On the "mechanized farms" a few Soviet tractors are used, but most of the work is done with primitive plows manned by groups of six pulling on plow ropes. When the slave laborers fail to fulfill their "norms," they are obliged to conduct "selfcriticism" sessions. Risings in these remote camps have been frequent. Mobile units of slave laborers have...
Most Harvard students think of an M.I.T. undergraduate as one of two extremes--a laboratory slave or the immature perpetrator of some highly publicized pranks. Although the two conceptions seem mutually exclusive, Tech men in surprising numbers manage to conform to both...