Mechanization cuts you off from life, says Orwell

[I]n a fully mechanised world there would be no more need to carpenter, to cook, to mend motor bicycles, etc., than there would be to dig. There is scarcely anything, from catching a whale to carving a cherry stone, that could not conceivably be done by machinery. The machine would even encroach upon the activities we now class as "art"; it is doing so already, via the camera and the radio. Mechanise the world as fully as it might be mechanised, and whichever way you turn there will be some machine cutting you off from the chance of working—that is, of living.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), p. 230 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)