The Technological Society

by Jacques Ellul

I read about half of this book and then decided I was done. I had gotten all I was going to get out of it. Buddy recommended a podcast about Jacques Ellul (Chronicles Podcast, Episode 31), and that got me interested in reading one of his books.

Ellul is credited with coining the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.”

The book talks a lot about what he calls “technique,” although it’s a while before he really defines what he means. On pp. 8-9, it seems like it just means a way of doing a thing (basically how I would normally use the word). On p. 13 and following, he works on a definition. I think technique is similar to “algorithm.”

“Technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his productive activity.” (4) Not all technique gives an economic yield. For example, there are techniques in nutrition, sport (Boy Scouts), solving equations, war, surgery, psychology. (15)

The machine has led to an “inhuman atmosphere” - slums, working women, estrangement from nature (4)

Man and machine were once separate. As Technique enters all areas of life, it integrates with man.

A new discovery is immediately put to use, “before anyone had a chance to reckon all the consequences.” (10)

“Organization” is defined as technique applied to social, economic, or administrative life. Standardize, rationalize, resolve all problems in advance to keep things running smoothly. (Thus, no room for inspiration or ingenuity when a problem arises!) (11) Impersonal. Methods and instructions are more important than individuals. “A world… pragmatic… and now being taken over by method.” (15)

Whereas technique was once traditional (inherited, slowly modified), modern technique has renounced all tradition. (In other words, JavaScript packages.)

The scientist unconsciously tries to limit the question to things that are or can be understood. This is like Weizenbaum’s joke about the man looking for his car keys where he has the most light to see by. (17)

There is technical operation and the technical phenomenon. Operation = means to an end, the steps taken. Tends to seek efficiency but can be spontaneous. Phenomenon = applying reason to operation. Creates more means (to experiment) but discards all but the most efficient. (19ff)

The most efficient means are then tried in other fields. Phenomenon = “the quest for the one best means in every field.”

On p. 24, he talks about magic as technique. This is weird and interesting.

The Greeks separated science from technique. They idealized a “contemplative intelligence disdainful of all utility.” (28) They “discredited manual labor (because of the practice of slavery)” and “were suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of brute force and implied a want of moderation.” (29) They deliberately rejected technique because of their philosophical conception of life. Modern man’s philosophical underpinnings are much shallower, and we are quick to accept new techniques. (AI, etc.)

The East: passive, fatalist, contemptuous of life and action. The West: active, conquering, turning nature to profit. (But he goes on to contradict this, finds some nuance) (32)

Rome: The perfect example of the technical spirit in antiquity. (33)

The one technique of the Middle Ages was scholasticism, but it was cumbersome and deforming. (35)

Five phenomena leading to the explosion of technique in the 18th century (47ff):

1. Slow build up of technical material from 1000-1750 AD.
2. Population expansion. As population grows, techniques are required to provide for the people.
3. An economy both stable and in flux. The foundation must be stable, but the economy must also be capable of great change.
4. Social: The disappearance of social taboos and of natural social groups (e.g., you need workers packed into urban centers for maximum efficiency, so families have to break down to some extent).
5. A technical intention. Invention as a way of life, something all of society supports.

The 18th century saw a “struggle to undermine the family” in order to elevate the rights of the individual (divorce laws, laws impacting paternal authority, …). Uproot individuals from social groups, concentrate them in cities to meet the demands of modern technique. “For individuals in an atomized society, only the state was left… the highest authority, and omnipotent as well.” (51)

Kierkegaard was a voice against technique, but he was too close to the truth and was not heeded. (55)

The concept of “comfort” was different in the Middle Ages. “Comfort for us means bathrooms, easy chairs, foam-rubber mattresses, air conditioning, washing machines, and so forth.” It means “to avoid effort.” In the Middle Ages, comfort meant a kind of “moral and aesthetic order.” Space was primary. “Men sought open spaces, large rooms, the possibility of moving about… These preoccupations are altogether foreign to us.” (66) Furthermore, they sought a certain “arrangement of space,” “not convenience, but a certain atmosphere.” A room with the right proportions could be comfortable even if it were not well heated and the chairs were hard.

“Society was not oriented toward the creation of a new instrument for a new need.” (67) Extend and refine old means instead. And the skill of a worker compensates for the deficiency of the tool.

Men obey motives other than just efficiency. 19th century society’s over-rationality violated “not only tradition but the deepest instincts” of man. Attempts to remain moral exist, but when they encumber technological progress, they are discarded.

Pages 64-76 give 4 limitations of technique prior to the 18th century:

• Technique applied only to narrow areas.
• Time given to technique was short. Man was not preoccupied with it.
• Technique was local. It did not spread quickly and evolved slowly.
• Human choice. A man could repudiate technology and get along without it.

Pages 80ff give aspects of technical automatism:

• The choice of Technique is automatic. Optimized. Not human.
• Technique overwhelms and replaces non-technique automatically. Non-T cannot oppose T. It will be eliminated. Ellul quotes Hitler on p. 84 writing (in Mein Kampf) that unless an enemy learns to oppose poison gas with poison gas, the one willing to use the gas will win almost mathematically. In other words, once any country or group uses T, everyone eventually has to.

Laws of self-augmentation

• Technical progress is irreversible. (Weizenbaum concluded this as well.)
• It tends toward geometric progression

As techniques proliferate, they begat new techniques. We push ahead, creating a T to solve the next problem. “Advance for its own sake becomes proportionally greater and the expression of human autonomy becomes proportionally feebler.” (92)

People try to distinguish between T and its use, but this is invalid. The cause and effect go together. Contrast “the grandeur of the printing press with the horridness of the newspaper.” But the machine imposes a “social form” which necessitates such newspapers. “Journalistic content is a technical complex expressely intended to adapt the man to the machine.” (96)

Each improvement to a technology also introduces new problems. (107)

The history of the look provides a succinct example of how new technology unbalances equilibria, leading to even more tech. The flying shuttle made the greater production of yarn necessary. But this production was impossible without a machine, so one was invented. Now too much yarn, leading to the loom. One invention leads to the need for the next. (111-12)

T explodes local and national cultures. “The one best way will prevail.” (130)

T is rigorously objective. Blots out personal opinions, modes of expression, individuality. (131)

This book reads like a non-fiction dystopian novel. Reminds me of the movie Brazil.

There is a fraternity among those who follow the same T, but it is at the same time isolating. They can work together on a task without needing to talk much, since they know what to do without extra communication. So efficient!

Page 132, on technique and specialization:

Technique is of necessity, and as compensation, our universal language. It is the fruit of specialization. But this very specialization prevents mutual understanding. Everyone today has his own professional jargon, modes of thought, and peculiar perception of the world. There was a time when the distortion of overspecialization was the butt of jokes and a subject for vaudeville. Today the sharp knife of specialization has passed like a razor into the living flesh. It has cut the umbilical cord which linked men with each other and with nature. The man of today is no longer able to understand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed universe. He no longer understands the vocabulary of the others. Nor does he comprehend the underlying motivations of the others. Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges the specializations because it produces a new type of man always and everywhere like his duplicate, who develops along technical lines. He listens to himself and speaks to himself, but he obeys the slightest indications of the apparatus, confident that his neighbor will do the same. Technique has become the bond between men. By its agency they communicate, whatever their languages, beliefs, or race. It has become, for life or death, the universal language which compensates for all the deficiencies and separations it has itself produced. This is the main reason for the great impetus of technique toward the universal.

The technological society worships efficiency.

An example: the bakery. Attempts to mechanize the bakery failed, so what is the solution? To change the product. Ultimately, to change human tastes so they prefer the product that technique is able to produce. (135)

“The autonomy of technique forbids man to choose his destiny.” He makes T sound like a force that even God cannot oppose. Takes it too far toward despair. (140)

Technique destroys mystery. But man needs the sacred, so he worships technique. (143)

I begin to see examples in my own life: As a kid, the dentist would pause for me to rinse and spit – slow, inefficient. Now he uses a suction tube – degrading, efficient. Or look at self checkout.

Technique pushes toward a planned economy. And once you go that route, can you ever go back? (184)

“Economic Man” – man is absorbed into the economic network, and all his non-economic activities are devalued. When Karianne and I want to “go do something,” it nearly always costs money. “Work purifies, enobles; it is a virtue and remedy.” (220) Work becomes God. Success is blessing.

I skipped most of chapter 3 (Technique and Economy). It’s getting tedious.

“Man was made to do his daily work with his muscles; but see him now, like a fly on flypaper, seated for eight hours, motionless at a desk.” (321) “Every man is in this fix… and nothing can be done about it.” There is a hopelessness to this book that I don’t think is fitting for a Christian. Lots of good points and ideas, but I decided to stop reading.

Vocab

• anchorite - (37)
• cenobitism - (37)
• pons asinorum - (8)