It was well known that people adapt badly to modern techniques.

In spite of progress in industrial mechanization due to ergonomics,
there have been many maladaptations which have produced either
disorders -  
formerly physiological and in modern times psychological -
or disruptions in the order and efficiency of techniques.

The troubles vary greatly, but the classical problem is that
people do not adapt to machines nor machines to people.

The ideal goal was a marrying of people and machines.

It might be the people who were evaluated negatively:
by their retrograde spirit they were hampering the
harmonious development of the technical world.
Or the blame might be put on the machines:

technical growth was crushing spontaneity, imagination,
values, the irrational element -
in other words, all that makes us human.

The individual is in a dilemma:
either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses
to use traditional, personal, moral, or empirical means,

thereby entering into competition with a power against which
there is no efficacious defense
and before which he must suffer defeat;

or he decides to accept technical necessity,
in which case he will himself appear the victor, but only
by submitting irreparably to technical slavery.

In effect he has no freedom of choice.”