In The Government Machine, Jon Agar traces the mechanization of government work in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He argues that this transformation has been tied to the rise of "expert movements," groups whose authority has rested on their expertise. The deployment of machines was an attempt to gain control over state action—a revolutionary move. Agar shows how mechanization followed the popular depiction of government as machine-like, with British civil servants cast as components of a general purpose "government machine"; indeed, he argues that today's general purpose computer is the apotheosis of the civil servant.

在《政府机器》（Government Machine）一书中，乔恩·阿加尔（Jon Agar）追溯了19世纪至21世纪初英国政府工作的机械化。他认为，这种转变与“专家运动”的兴起有关，这些团体的权威取决于他们的专业知识。机器的部署是为了获得对国家行动的控制权，这是一项革命性的举措。阿加尔展示了机械化是如何遵循流行的政府机器化描述的，英国公务员是通用“政府机器”的组成部分；事实上，他认为今天的通用计算机是公务员的典范。