What is society's effect on the individual? This book is a compelling appeal to the humanization of an evermore technological society. Social theorist Erich Fromm gives a classic description of the madness of modern culture, so applicable to the 21st century. He writes: A specter is stalking in our midst whom only a few can see with clarity. It is not the old ghosts of communism and fascism. It is a new specter: a completely mechanized society, devoted to maximal material output and consumption directed by computers. Humankind itself is being transformed into a part of the total machine: well-fed and entertained, yet passive and un-alive, with little feeling.