The play uses the metaphor of a pinball machine—a new innovation in Italy at the time of and one of which Fo and his wife Franca Rame were fond— to convey mechanisation and conspicuous consumption.
Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald suggested that it was a productivity-shock in agriculture, through fertilizers, mechanization and improved seed, that caused the drop in agricultural product prices.
The miners' union, the United Mine Workers of America, realized that rapid mechanization meant drills that produced much more dust, but under John L. Lewis they decided not to raise the black lung issue because it might impede the mechanization that was producing higher productivity and higher wages.
After the Nazi takeover of power, increased funding became available for mechanization, and in 1934, a development program for standardized chassis was launched.
His ideas and books, Space, Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command, had an important conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1950s era.