Veblen Instinct of Workmanship - A quick additional thought pg. 242

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 On page 242, we see Veblen express something like a hypothesis regarding human mastery of technology. He writes that, "The larger the available body of information of this character, and the more comprehensive and unremitting the share taken by the discipline of the machine process in the routine of daily life, therefore, the greater, other things equal, will be the rate of advance in the technological mastery of mechanical facts." Veblen is pointing to the importance of a "rate" in assessing the relative changes in a society's move from the handicraft era to the machine or mechanical era.

Of "this character" to what is he referring to? Here we need to look at what he discussed above. He is referring to the fact that the machine world needs information that is not of a personal or anthropomorphic character. The faster this type of knowledge and information is stripped from the ideas or information of a community, the faster its rate of advance in the machine age.  In essence, the shape of the habits of thought must change quite a bit from the handicraft era in order to successfully adapt to the new technology.

He would later apply these same ideas in a geographic context to explain why Great Britain moved faster in the "rate of advance of the technological mastery" than other countries in Europe.

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