The Technological Society was written in 1954 by French philosopher Jacques Ellul. The book traces humanity’s historical discovery of technology, and how technique has come to dominate every aspect of our lives. Ellul writes in an academic style that is not always very accessible, but often presents his arguments in a wonderfully lucid way.
Ellul’s thesis is that man’s obsession with technique and scientific experimentation has caused technology to improve substantially. This has led to a state of being where man is no longer in control of his technology but is a slave to it. And this isn’t a conspiracy theory, Ellul is not trying to dissuade his reader from adapting to the new environment he finds himself. Indeed, he clearly states that the alternatives to assimilating into the technological environment are catastrophic to the individual psychologically.
The author is describing a process that was once reversible but now no longer is. And it is not anyone’s fault, but simply the inevitable consequence of natural forces beyond our control. To live a prosperous life, sustain himself, and feed ever growing populations, man has had to devise new methods for food production, medicine, shelter, and weaponry. It is competition between nations that has given rise to technique. To properly understand this concept which Ellul discusses in great detail, it is useful to consider what it is not. Technique is not the same as technology. The latter is a by-product of the former. Technique is a systematic way of doing things. You can apply technique to agriculture, politics, sports, music, and social life.
There was a time when systems didn’t exist. The only people who could claim a significant advantage over others was the genius, who was much more efficient at making sense of data, or interpreting it. But as systems were invented out of necessity, the genius became less relevant. Even a fool, if he were to work systematically, using the tools that are available to him, can be more efficient than a genius without such access.
As we became better at developing these systems or techniques by hyper-experimentation, we have become far more efficient at attaining our desired results, but not necessarily our desired goals. This is really the focus of the book. In falling in love with efficiency, we have lost sight of the things that are truly important in life. We have foregone freedom, family, love, poetry, beauty for convenience, expedience, economy, efficiency, and growth.
People have been turned into machines that no longer have authentic self-expression. They are nodes in a highly complex economic system. They have the illusion of freedom and they seek to escape their mundane existence by resorting to movies or music, where for a few hours they can experience a shadow of true freedom.
In addition to the fact that their jobs leaves them with no time to reflect their individuality through creative acts – the few moments they have to spare are invested in activities that are merely an escape from reality.
The systematization of society has resulted in a reality where individuals no longer eat when they are hungry or sleep when they are tired, they are instruments that are utilized for collective purposes, and they work according to a schedule that is outside their control. The exception are the artisans but they are a dying breed that have been made increasingly irrelevant due to the pressures of meeting consumer demand in one form or another.
Urbanization has resulted in an ugly artificial experience where man is removed from the beauty of nature. There are no longer any secluded areas by the sea or in the mountains due to overpopulation. People are going to be replaced by automation and this will inevitably accompany existential crises that have not been experienced before. The Bourgeois dream of an efficient, wealthy society has triumphed but at the price of everything that imbued life with value.
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More than that, people are constantly subjected to state and/or business propaganda (advertising). This onslaught on man’s subconscious has resulted in psychological crises that have not been solved to this day.
Ellul argues that we were not meant to live our lives insulated from nature, we were designed to breathe fresh air, to interact with living things, to respond to our bodies. Our identity was supposed to be formed by human interaction and personal contemplation. Instead, we form our identities and conceptions of the world by reading the news, watching TV, and listening to the radio – all forms of propaganda.
Of course, technology has brought with it many benefits that are too numerous to count, but at what cost? That is the question that we should truly be asking ourselves according to Ellul. Even the brightest scientists are blind propagandizers of furthering investment into their field of research, but do not stop to ask: “to what end?”
Why is it important to go to the moon? Why is it important to go to Mars? Why is it important to build more precise and devasting weapons? The scientist is not interested in wrestling with these questions. Outside of his own narrow domain, he may be of average intelligence at best, and yet he has many supporters and followers who will support his vision blindly. He is a slave to technique like the rest of us, but the difference is that he is an active contributor.
As Ellul describes this dystopic reality – it is disconcerting that more than seventy years later, many of his objections to the new equilibrium are perhaps even more pertinent today. We live in an age where the line between what is virtual and what is real is blurrier than it ever was. Many of us live most of our lives on a screen. But more dangerous than that, and this is a point Ellul makes clear with countless examples, we have not merely been hijacked by technology. That is, it is not simply that our physical environments have changed, but that our psychology has been reshaped.
We no longer think like humans. We think like objects that aim to maximize time. We are economic machines, and we no longer find value in anything outside the economic milieu. This way of thinking has permeated our relationships with our romantic partners, friends, and family, has resulted in neuroses and a vast number of psychological disorders.
We scoff at poetry and the arts, we are disconnected from the past, we value people according to their economic worth, not their character or the content of their thoughts. We live in a world that is becoming increasingly materialistic.
Keep in mind that Ellul is not criticizing Capitalism, in fact, to him capitalism has at least an intrinsic buffer against technique (since there are market forces in play). Communism and other totalitarian systems utilize technique in a far more efficient and directed way.
Ellul describes the problem as follows: a technical society (one that prioritizes efficiency) is one that will favor those who are economically efficient. More wealth means more investment into efficient systems.
Under Capitalism, being materialistic is a natural by-product of a society that values efficiency. Under Communism, technique serves the purpose of the state. This is even more dangerous, since the intentions of the state are inevitably malicious. A dictator investing his country’s wealth into building killing machines by perfecting technique is arguably more dangerous than a society that only does so peripherally.
Ellul argues that technology is not an objective force that can be used for good or evil; instead, it is intrinsically neutral. However, he also believes that it is inevitable and irreversible, meaning that we cannot simply choose to go back to a pre-technological age. This might sound pessimistic, but Ellul’s arguments are not based on a purely pessimistic view. He claims that the benefits of technological advances far outweigh the risks. For example, he believes that the benefits of automated driving have far outweighed the risks of accidents caused by human error. In the end, it all comes down to the question of how we use technology. If we use it wisely, then it will be good for us; if we misuse it, then it will be bad for us.
But fundamentally, he believes that technology is slowly but surely eroding our autonomy and freedom, turning us into passive observers of our own lives. This has something to do with the nature of technology itself, but also has much to do with the way we use technology. The Internet is one example of how technology can be used to turn us into passive participants in our own lives. The Internet can give us access to a wealth of information that would have been unavailable to us before, but we are gradually being turned into ‘human automata’.
As this information grows, so too does the opportunity for us to be exposed to dangerous and harmful content. For example, the internet has made it easy for people to access child pornography. In fact, according to a study published in the journal “Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking”, as of 2016, one in five internet users has viewed child pornography at some point in their lives. This is a serious problem, because child pornography is defined as any visual depiction of a child under the age of 18 engaged in sexual activity. It also becomes harder and harder to discern what is true and what is not. We are constantly exposed to a bombardment of information, both good and bad, and it is hard to filter the good from the bad.
As a result, we become less and less capable of making our own decisions. This is especially true when it comes to politics. We are constantly bombarded with political information, but it is difficult to separate the true from the false. Take the Russia-Ukraine war, for example. How much information can the average person take in about this complex conflict? It is hard enough for experts to understand all the nuances and machinations of this war. For the average person, it is impossible. As a result, we rely on the media to give us information about what is going on. And yet, the media is often biased and can be unreliable. It can be difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood.
This difficulty is not simply due to the presence of information overload or biased media, but also to the way technology has changed the way information is delivered. It is now easier than ever for information to be disseminated quickly and easily, and it is more difficult than ever for people to distinguish between the true and the false. The information glut, combined with the easy access to information and the speed with which information travels, has made it difficult for people to absorb and make decisions about complex topics.
Imagine what it was like for the average person in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. With little to no access to the news, you would have had to rely on propagandain order to find out what was going on. Now, the average person has instant access to information on a plethora of topics. But we also have the instant access to misinformation. The result is that we are bombarded with information that is not only false but confusing. The average person in the Soviet Union might have known that he was being lied to by the government, but the danger today is that truth is mixed in with falsehoods and it is very difficult to discern which is which.
For Ellul, the key issue is not the content of particular technologies (e.g., nuclear weapons), but rather the way in which they are used. He believes that all technologies share certain characteristics which make them particularly dangerous:
– They are brutal and anonymous, meaning that they can be used without empathy or responsibility;
– They are efficient and cumulative, meaning that they tend to get faster, better, and cheaper over time;
– They have an inevitability about them, meaning that once they are introduced they are very difficult to get rid of;
– They create dependencies, meaning that we become increasingly reliant on them as we use them more;
– They enter into every aspect of our lives, meaning that escaping them becomes increasingly difficult.