The triumph of machine over people.

Allen’s terse phrase reads like a satirical caption for modernity: technological systems—machines, procedures, and the bureaucratic logic that accompanies them—coming to dominate the humans they were meant to serve. The “triumph” is ironic, suggesting a victory that is socially costly: efficiency, standardization, and automation can eclipse judgment, empathy, and individual agency. In Allen’s comedic worldview, the line also works as a punchy diagnosis of everyday frustrations (from gadgets to institutions) where people adapt themselves to the machine rather than the reverse. Its enduring appeal lies in how easily it maps onto later anxieties about mechanization, mass media, and, today, algorithmic decision-making.