Sir Christopher Wren was the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in which he is buried in a simple tomb with a famous Latin epitaph, which can be paraphrased for our purposes as “if you are searching for a monument, look about you.” Joshua Freeman, in his sparkling history of the factory, says much the same about his book's subject: if you want a monument to the factory, look about you, to your house, your study, your clothes, or your desk. What is there that hasn't been manufactured in a factory? And yet Freeman's book is also something of an epitaph to a business model. We live, we are often told, in a postindustrial age. The factory has lost its ability to awe or to amaze (though not, perhaps, the ability to produce indignation and anger). The factory as technology's avatar has been replaced by the high-tech campus, where things are not made manually but digitally, keystroke by keystroke. Still, we are very much products of the age of the factory.

中文翻译：

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Joshua B. Freeman，《巨兽：工厂史和现代世界的形成》

克里斯托弗·雷恩爵士是伦敦圣保罗大教堂的建筑师，他被埋葬在一座简单的坟墓里，墓碑上刻有著名的拉丁文墓志铭，为了我们的目的，可以将其解释为“如果您正在寻找一座纪念碑，请环顾四周。 ” 约书亚·弗里曼 (Joshua Freeman) 在他关于工厂的辉煌历史中，对这本书的主题也说了很多相同的话：如果你想要一座工厂的纪念碑，请环顾四周，看看你的房子、你的书房、你的衣服或你的办公桌。有什么不是工厂生产的？然而，弗里曼的书也是商业模式的墓志铭。我们经常被告知，我们生活在后工业时代。工厂已经失去了敬畏或惊奇的能力（尽管也许还没有产生愤慨和愤怒的能力）。作为科技化身的工厂已经被高科技校园所取代，东西不是手工制作的，而是数字制作的，一个按键一个按键。尽管如此，我们仍然是工厂时代的产品。