1. So me examples in the choice of designs for agricultural harvesters, nuclear reactors, and computer-controlled manufacturing are discussed in later chapters. Advertising creates demand for new products, whether or not they fill real needs, in order to stimulate a larger volume of production and a consumer society. Calculation and control do exclude mutuality and receptivity in human relationships and prevent the humility and reverence that religious awareness requires. Policy will influence the impact on two key dimensions: diffusion and consequences. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit from Each Other, in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. It is probably clear from my summary that The Technological Society is vulnerable to criticism from several angles. This view is common among the optimists. This position has much in common with the Catholic view and shares its understanding that God is at work in history, society, and nature as well as in personal life and the church. He didnt travel much, criticized politics of every stripe and was a radical Christian. Without God, my work would have an eminently tragic meaning, Ellul told Chastenet. What is called Technique can be assimilated neither to the machine nor to a collection of machines, methods and products. Many of the social and environmental costs of industrial processes are not included in market prices. What happened? Though influenced by Marx, Ellul looked to technique rather than forces of production or class struggle as his key to understanding modern society. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business. A synthesis of christianity and society has been advocated historically by the Roman Catholic Church. Donald McKenzie and Judy Wajcman (Milton Keynes, England: Oxford University Press, 1985). Moreover, strong protest and vivid examples are needed to challenge the historical dominance of technological optimism and the disproportionate resource consumption of affluent societies. 19. 7, ed Paul Durbin (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1984). A Synopsis and Analysis of the Thought and Writings of Jacques Ellul Exclusive dependence on technological rationality also leads to a truncation of experience, a loss of imaginative and emotional life, and an impoverishment of personal existence. 38. John Zerman and Alice Carnes. Only relatively affluent groups or nations can afford the latest technology the gaps between rich and poor have been perpetuated and in many ideas increased by technological developments. Similarly, I imagine he would look askance at Elon Musks efforts to put more green cars on the road, asking instead: Do we need so many cars on the road in the first place? As the critics of technology recognize, the person who tries to work for change within the existing order may be absorbed by the establishment. Norman Denny (New York: Harper & 1964), chaps. 9. They had great respect for the created world ordered by God, and they called for social justice and the redirection of cultural life. Each of us can adopt individual life-styles more consistent with human and environmental values. Engineering was once considered heavy and dirty work unsuitable for women, but long after it became a clean and intellectual profession, there are still few women in it. 44. Building on the ideas of Heidegger, he holds that authentic human existence requires the engagement and depth that occur when simple things and practices focus our attention and center our lives. 2. Policy changes require a combination of protest, political pressure, and the kind of new vision that the biblical concern for social justice can provide.42. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Life is indeed impoverished if the technological attitudes of mastery and power dominate one's outlook. 3. Appraisals of modern technology diverge widely. The characteristics of technical progress are self-augmentation, automization, absence of limits, casual progression, a tendency toward acceleration, disparity, and ambivalence. But I would submit that the threat to these areas of human existence comes not from technology itself but from preoccupation with material progress and unqualified reliance on technology. Samuel Florman, Science for Public Consumption; More Than We Can Chew? Technology Review 86 (April 1983): 1213. 10, ed. Technology has been celebrated as the source of material progress and human fulfillment. Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. He remains the most revolutionary, prophetic and dangerous voice of this or any century. Below, we propose some basic insights, claims, and commitments that all seekers of new societal relations might choose to further develop and refine. 34. But Gendron insists that the Soviet Union did not follow Marx's vision. One thing is clear: readers who ignore Elluls spiritual writings are missing one of the major objectives of his work. Melvin Kranzberg, Technology the Liberator. in Technology at the Turning Point, ed. Until the 18th century, technical progress occurred slowly and with restraint. See for example Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, vol. A new technology may displace some workers but it also creates new jobs. It is often easier to find a technical fix for a social problem than to try to change human behavior or get agreement on political policies.13, Florman urges us to rely on the judgment of experts in decisions about technology. He repeatedly takes Lewis Mumford to task for focusing narrowly on modern technology, which Ellul sees as merely a physical manifestation of the broader concept of technique. Technological progress creates more problems. Aquinas held that there is both a revealed law, known through scripture the church, and a natural law, built into the created order and accesable human reason. A key concept for Ellul is freedom, but not freedom as it is commonly understood. He, too, warned about the promise of leisure provided by the mechanization and automatization of work. With new forms of transportation, one can in a few hours travel to distant cities that once took months to reach. Philosophy of Technology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1988), defines technology as the practical implementation of intelligence and argues that intelligence itself has both practical and theoretical forms. In China the authorities have gone one step further. Its true that if we take the example of the automobile, Elluls claim is borne out: the secondary effects include fatalities and planet-threatening pollution, consequences that are arguably more disastrous for the world than the lack of the automobile would have been. human experience provides a common thread through most of Ellul's work. Large-scale systems are usually more efficient than small-scale ones. In a bureaucracy, the goals of the organization are paramount and responsibility is diffused, so that no one feels personally responsible. This would give to the commercial sponsors of technology the choices that are ours as responsible citizens. La Technique ou lenjeu du sicle [1954], Le Systme technicien [1977]). She answers the question of What Could Possibly Go Right?. Because long-term consequences are discounted at the current interest rate, they are virtually ignored in economic decisions. Technique is not the same as technology; not in French, nor in English. New techniques for teaching, selling things or organizing political parties also required propaganda. Through most of history, leisure and cultural pursuits have been the privilege of the few, while the mass of humanity was preoccupied with survival. 1. 1972); Robert Schrag, Ten Thousand Working Days (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978); William A. Faunce, Problems of an Industrial Society, 2d ed. There is also Chellis Glendinning, author of When Technology Wounds, and Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and Rebels Against the Future (a history of the original Luddite movement). They must be of intermediate scale so that jobs can be created in rural areas and small towns, to slow down mass migration to the cities. }ic9jME[!4gNIwkV) 3. Ellul warned that if each of us abdicates our human responsibilities and leads a trivial existence in a technological society, then we will betray freedom. In each case the underlying assumptions and value judgments are examined. 37. Only two possibilities are left to the individual, he writes. Linear Development. P. Hans Sun, Notes on How to Begin to Think about Technology in a Theological Way, Theology and Technology, ed. Jacque Ellul's The Technological Society, originally published in 1954, has become a footnote to one of the stranger events in U.S. history. It is said that technology is a way of life. Living standards were actually very low, work was brutal, and roles were rigidly defined. in the context of the philosophy of technology by J. Ellul. ed. See also The Place of Technology in a General Biology of Mankind, and On Looking at a Cyclotron, in The Activation of Energy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971). Other contextualists have pointed to the role of technology in the subordination of women. The answer to the destructive features of technology is not less technology, but technology of the right kind. Let me try to summarize these three views of technology in relation to the conflicting values (identified in italics) that are discussed in the next two chapters, There are many variations within each of the three broad positions outlined above, but each represents a distinctive emphasis among these values. Its consequences are unintended and unforeseeable. Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1980), also The Modern Babylon Culture, in Technology and Responsibility, ed. 37. Defend your principles. Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) French philosopher; Holds that technology is progressive and beneficial in many ways, it is also doubtful in many ways. In general, power corrupts and leads people to rationalize their use of power for their own ends. Mitcham and Grote. 7-20. 3. The staff members of regulatory agencies, in turn, are mainly recruited from the industries they are supposed to regulate. 35. By hard work, community cooperation, and frugal ways, they have prospered in agriculture and have continued their distinctive life-styles and educational patterns. Sometimes a technology was indeed based on recent scientific discoveries. Ellul's pessimistic Arguments are: a. In this chapter, views of technology are grouped under three headings: Technology as Liberator, Technology as Threat, and Technology as Instrument of Power. Biotechnology promises the eradication of genetic diseases, the improvement of health, and the deliberate design of new specieseven the modification of humanity itself. Pacey calls for greater public participation and a more democratic distribution of power in the decisions affecting technology. The practical tasks can include both the production of material goods (in industry and agriculture, for instance) and the provision of services (by computers, communications media, and biotechnologies, among others). 2017 Gifford Lecturer Agustn Fuentes elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Athens and Jerusalem: God, Humans, and Nature. 43. But they offer hope that technology can he used for more humane ends, either by political measures for more effective guidance within existing institutions or by changes in the economic and political systems themselves. It embraces artificiality and seeks to replace all natural systems with engineered ones. G. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990). The magnitude of these stakes, taken with the insufficiency of our predictive knowledge, leads to the pragmatic rule to give the prophecy of doom priority over the prophecy of bliss.26 We should seek the least harm, not the greatest good. We have no right to tamper genetically with human nature or to accept policies that entail even the remote possibility of the extinction of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. 46. : Episode 99 Fran Korten, Protect the Flame: But Where the Danger Is, the Saving Power Also Grows, The Response: The French Uprising with Konstantin, Drive for domination puts U.S. unity at risk, Crazy Town: Episode 70. He didnt come from French blue blood; he was a meteque.. In the previous volume, I discussed the social construction of science thesis, in which it is argued that not only the direction of scientific development but also the concepts and theories of science are determined by cultural assumption and interests. Human identity is defined by roles in organizations. The list is endless because technique, or what most of us would just call technology, has become the artificial blood of modern civilization. This view encourages a qualified optimism about social change (and, I suggest, about technology). Reactions vary, but many would agree with Bernard Gendron that in the Soviet Union workers were as alienated, factories as hierarchically organized, experts as bureaucratic, and pollution and militarism as rampant as in the United States. 3. He wrote of technique, about which he meant more than just technology, machines and digital gadgets but rather the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in the economic, social and political affairs of civilization. 30. This is a significant oversight: to write of the downside of modern technology without referencing Ellul is arguably tantamount to writing about Communism without referencing Marx. . Ian G. Barbour (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). A . The human and environmental values relevant to the appraisal of technology are further analyzed in chapters 2 and 3. According as its defenders, technology brings psychological and social benefits as well as material progress. They are concerned about individual rights and the dignity of persons. Bertalanffy), that is to say, an ensemble in which factors are so closely linked together that: It is thus necessary to consider technique as an ensemble. But historical analysis suggests that most technologies are already molded by particular interests and institutional goals. And a whole new arsenal of human techniquestherapy, pharmaceuticals, mass mediaemerges to help us adjust to our ever-increasing dislocation. The dynamism of technology can liberate people from static and confining traditions to assume responsibility for their own lives. The fact of the matter is that when one begins to read Ellul, understanding increases. Among the volumes dealing with broad attitudes toward technology are Albert H. Teich, ed., Technology and the Future, 5th ed. 29. Mitcham and Grote. The technocrats claim that their judgments are value free; the technical elite is supposedly nonpolitical. Public discussion of these issues only leads to anxiety and erratic political actions. 27. Technology, then, is but an expression and by-product of the underlying reliance on technique, on the proceduralization whereby everything is organized and managed to function most efficiently, and directed toward the most expedient end of the highest productivity. More than science, which limits itself to explaining the how, technique desacralizes because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books) that mystery does not exist. Apparently ignorant of Elluls Christianity and pacifism, the militantly atheistic Kaczynski came to the conclusion that the only means of overcoming the hegemony of technique was literally to blow up the system. Elle uniformise les civilisations. Once we allow technology to define the good life, we have excluded many important human values from consideration. . I believe that we should neither accept uncritically the past directions of technological development nor reject technology in toto but redirect it toward the realization of human and environmental values.
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