John Dewey believed that "automatic, habitual behavior clashed with the possibility of an intelligent and reflective citizenry on whom a democratic politics depended" (Crary's summation, 78)
"Novelty and communication, he argued, would inevitably discourage repetitive patterns [and] he believed that 'intelligent' or collectively beneficial habits could be nurtured pedagogically"
Crary argues that Dewey was a bit naive--or that he was a product of an earlier time, "when it was still possible [...] for the idea of novelty to be explored independently of the logistics of capitalist production and circulation"
Dewey is born in 1859, but "[b]y the 1950s, the production of novelty, in all its dispiriting forms, had become a central enterprise of advanced economies all over the globe"