Science & Tech Quote by John Harrison

A “two-fold mission” is the giveaway here: Harrison isn’t selling a gadget, he’s trying to legitimize a new kind of institution. Framing technology as “an expressive element” quietly yanks it out of the workshop and into the realm of art, taste, and public meaning. For an inventor in the 18th century, that’s a subtle power move. It refuses the idea that tools are neutral and that invention is merely utility; it suggests technology is a language, capable of style, persuasion, even emotion. That word “expressive” smuggles in authorship: someone is speaking through the machine.

Then comes the moral anchor: “bridge gaps between diverse groups of people.” The rhetoric is civic-minded, almost philanthropic, but it’s also strategic. Innovation doesn’t just need patrons; it needs legitimacy across classes, professions, and factions. “Bridge” casts technology as a mediator rather than a disruptor, a promise that progress can connect rather than fracture. It’s an optimistic metaphor, but also a defensive one, preempting the suspicion that new devices concentrate power, deskill labor, or widen social distance.

The subtext is that diversity is already a problem to be managed - a sign of social fragmentation in need of engineered solutions. CRATEL, in this framing, becomes more than a lab: it’s a cultural project that treats technology as both performance and diplomacy. Harrison’s intent reads like early modern PR for the Enlightenment itself: invention as creativity, and creativity as social glue.