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Résumé :
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Power is tools, machines, wheels, levers, oil, energy, structures, the strenght in muscles. Power is communication, information, transportation, administration. Power is ability to think, plan, invent, adapt, use, act, produce. Power comes from the sun, the earth's stored riches, man's long experience, the sciences that we describe as technology or engineering and that have expanded with revolutionnary force in the past few years. We examine many aspects of power in this book, but we do not cover all agricultural technologies. We devote ourselves mainly to a more limited, but common, view of technology : the application and control of power in several forms, the use of a growing variety of materials, and the improvement in technical processes to raise the productivity and efficiency of economic activities and to reduce their requirements of human labor. We consider the history, potentialities, and physical effects of power but not, except at times in passing, the social, political, and humanitarian problems that the possession of power may bring.
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