--- Francis Bacon on Daedalus's Labyrinth, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients (1857), XIX. Dædalus, Or the Mechanic
Excerpt:
Many and excellent works, as well in honour of the gods as for the adornment and ennobling of cities and public places, had been built and modelled by him; but it is for unlawful inventions that his name is most famous. For he it was who supplied the machine which enabled Pasiphae to satisfy her passion for the bull; so that the unhappy and infamous birth of the monster Minotaurus, which devoured the ingenuous youth, was owing to the wicked industry and pernicious genius of this man. Then to conceal the first mischief he added another, and for the security of this pest devised and constructed the Labyrinth; a work wicked in its end and destination, but in respect of art and contrivance excellent and admirable.
A wonderfully concise exposition of our ambivalence about tech and technologists.
