ellul's pessimistic arguments about technologyellul's pessimistic arguments about technology

Like cancer in a living organism, the systematization of technique pervades every cell of our modern technical and technological society. Either he remains what he was [prior to the disruptive technological development], in which case he becomes more and more unadapted, neurotic, and insufficient, loses his possibilities of subsistence, and is at last tossed on the social rubbish heap, whatever his talents may be; or he adapts himself to the new sociological organism, which becomes his world, and he becomes unable to live except in a mass society. He agrees with the pessimists that various technologies reinforce each other in interlocking systems, and he acknowledges that large-scale technologies lead to the concentration of economic and political power. 26. The suppression of the critical faculty mans growing incapacity to distinguish truth from falsehood, the individual from the collectivity, action from talk, reality from statistics, and so on is one of the most evident results of the technical power of propaganda., Faking the news may have been a common practice on Soviet radio during Elluls day, but it is now a global phenomenon leading us towards what Ellul called a sham universe.. For example, U.S. legislation supporting railroads and public mass transit systems was blocked by a coalition of auto manufacturers, insurance companies, oil companies, labor unions, and the highway construction industry. Mitcham and Grote. Inevitably, the implementation of such systems strengthens the central statethe only actor in the process capable of clearing all obstacles to the one best way. However, we may now be in the presence of the progressive elaboration of such a reactive capability. Ellul believed that the first act of freedom a citizen can exercise is to recognize the necessity of understanding technique and its colonizing powers. 3 0 obj His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavour have become mere entries in techniques filing cabinet.. 45. Ellul's pessimistic Arguments are: a. He wanted his work to have the same comprehensive sweep as Marxs, even as he recognized that Marxs proposed solutions of the nineteenth century had contributed to the very problem Ellul was now attempting to address in the twentieth. Four issues seem to me particularly important in analyzing the differences among the positions outlined above. I am not a member yet (register) | Teich. 1. Several degrees and types of determinism can be distinguished. The dynamism of technology can liberate people from static and confining traditions to assume responsibility for their own lives. 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. He has won seven National Magazine Awards for his journalism since 1989 and top honours for investigative writing from the Association of Canadian Journalists. 32. More Leisure. These are wildly impractical questionsimpractical because, among other reasons, only a centralized, authoritarian state could compel people to turn off their lights or decrease their car use at a level that would make any difference, and that would be antithetical to everything Ellul stood for. Resilience is a program of the nonprofit organization, Slide Anything shortcode error: A valid ID has not been provided, Navigating the PolycrisisLife in Turbulent Times, What Could Possibly Go Right? Technology influences human life but is itself part of a cultural system; it is an instrument of social power serving the purposes of those who control it. Comparing his ideas with the thoughts of other anti-technicists and technicists, we confirm . (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981). - may seem that technology is primarily concerned with the product. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, trans. Through most of history, leisure and cultural pursuits have been the privilege of the few, while the mass of humanity was preoccupied with survival. Above all, soil erosion and massive deforestation threaten the biological resources essential for human life, and global warming from our use of fossil fuels threatens devastating changes in world climates. In his earlier writings, Harvey Cox held that freedom to master and shape the world through technology liberates us from the confines of tradition. Norman Faramelli, Technethics (New York: Friendship Press, 1971). Contextualists also point to the diversity of science-technology interactions. Gibson Winter (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). I will suggest that the most important from of freedom is participation in the decisions affecting our lives. They can sell their labor as a commodity, but their work is not a meaningful form of self-expression. In agriculture, some experts anticipate that the continuing Green Revolution and the genetic engineering of new crops will provide adequate food for a growing world population. Of course, pollution abatement technologies can treat many of the effluents of industry, but often unexpected, indirect, or delayed consequences occur. . They may acknowledge the presence of technological choices but expect such choices to be missed because they are pessimistic about human nature and institutionalized greed. Ellul was one of the first to note that you couldnt distinguish between bad and good effects of technology. 1965), and The Responsibility of the Christian in a World of Technology, in Science and Religion, ed. Schuurman was also a contributor to Stephen Monsma, ed., Responsible Technology: A Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986). 16. Life is indeed impoverished if the technological attitudes of mastery and power dominate one's outlook. 8. . PDF Thomas Merton and the "Pessimism" of Jacques Ellul - GORDON OYER 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. Daid Kipnis, Technology and Power (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1990). 2. The Foundation for Responsible Robotics recentlycreateda small stir by asking if sexual intimacy with robots could lead to greater social isolation.. Here was an inspiring vision of a planetary future in which technology and spiritual development would be linked together. It is one of the first of many ironies that a man who would so fiercely champion individual autonomy would allow his career path to be steered by his father. Three views have been proposed (see Fig. We should rely on the recommendations of experts on such matters.14 Florman extols the unquenchable spirit and irrepressible human will evident in technology: For all our apprehensions, we have no choice but to press ahead. 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). 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. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Technology and Man: A Christian Vision, in Science and Religion. There is something satisfying in the way Ellul presents his assertion like a mathematical formula. There is a considerable range of views among contemporary Marxists. Technique denies mystery a priori. 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. The official slogan of the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1933 was: Science FindsIndustry AppliesMan Conforms. This has been called the assembly-line view because it pictures science at the start of the line and a stream of technological products pouring off the end of the line.19 If technology is fundamentally benign, there is no need for government interference except to regulate the most serious risks. But he argues that when enough citizens are concerned, political processes can be effective in guiding technology toward human welfare. 21. But to become a mass man entails a tremendous amount of psychic mutation. La Technique ou lenjeu du sicle [1954], Le Systme technicien [1977]). 7. My copy of EllulsThe Technological Societyhas yellowed with age, but it remains one of the most important books I own. The son of a French-Portuguese mother and a Serbian-Italian father, Ellul came to view his outsider statusboth as a product of the melting pot and as that rare French intellectual who eschewed Parisas a key component of his self-identity. According as its defenders, technology brings psychological and social benefits as well as material progress. Elluls primary explanation of how necessity determines and dominates contemporary society was to attribute such to the methodology of technique. He credits his life-long friend, Bernard Charbonneau, as having drawn his attention to technique as the most important phenomenon of sociological understanding back in 1935, and notes that had Karl Marx understood this sociological factor, he would have posited technique as the thrust of his social dialecticism rather than material inequities. Many people in developing nations now look on technology as their principal source of hope. The rich are usually more anxious about their future than the poor. 18. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) and The Reactor and the Whale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). For them the most important fount of participatory freedom are opportunities for participation in political processes and in work-related decisions. For the first time ever a political candidate or party can effectively talk to each individual voter privately in their own home and tell them exactly what they want to hear in a way that cant be tracked or audited.. Summer/Fall 2014 . I join them in upholding the significance of personal relationships and a vision of personal fulfillment that goes beyond material affluence. In subsequent chapters we will examine each of these specific claims as well as the general attitudes they reveal. Many readers will find this a vexing experience. William Pickets (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1977). Emanuel Mesthene, Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society (New York; New American Library, 1970). Education Virtualization Prospects In Pessimistic Light Of 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. Technology can contribute to the enrichment of human life and the flowering of creativity. Sin is prevalent in all life, but in personal life it is overcome by grace; gospel comes before law as the Christian responds in faith and in love of neighbor. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) and The Reactor and the Whale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Improved Communications. 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. Reactions at the conference to this disturbing argument varied. 37. It has a magnificent future if it is incorporated into God's work of creation and redemption. We should challenge the rule of technology and restrict it to the limited role of supporting the humanly meaningful activities associated with a simpler life.27, In Technology and Power, the psychologist David Kipnis maintains that those who control a technology have power over other people and this affects personal attitudes as well as social structures, Power holders interpret technological superiority as moral superiority and tend to look down on weaker parties. They see run-away technology as an autonomous and all-embracing system that molds all of life, including the political sphere, to its requirements. The human and environmental values relevant to the appraisal of technology are further analyzed in chapters 2 and 3. Birth control techniques, for example, allow a couple to choose the size and timing of their family. 3. But some former Facebook executives such as Chamath Palihapitiya belatedly realized they have engineered a force beyond their control. 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). This third position seems to me more consistent with the biblical outlook than either of the alternatives. See for example Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, vol. Insight and inspiration in turbulent times. 8. The individual is helpless within the system. The hole in the ozone layer caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons had not been anticipated by any scientists. If technique is a milieu and a system, the ethical problem can only be posed in terms of this global operation. Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. Executive Summary Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI)a general purpose technology affecting many industrieshas been focused on advances in machine learning, which we recast as a quality-adjusted drop in the price of prediction. Teilhard affirmed the value of secular life in the world and the importance of human efforts in building the earth as we cooperate in the creative work of God. 2. When telephones were introduced, women were the switchboard operators and record keepers, while men designed and repaired the equipment and managed the whole system. Reference to ordered systems of people and machines directs attention to social institutions as well as to the hardware of technology. But technology directed to genuine human needs is a legitimate expression of humankind's creative capacities and an essential contribution to its welfare. The passions it provokes which exist in everybody are amplified. 48. Technology is finally thought of as the source of salvation, the agent of secularized redemption.29 In an affluent society, a legitimate concern for material progress readily becomes a frantic pursuit of comfort, a total dedication to self-gratification. Power over nature gives greater opportunity for the exercise of human freedom.6. Cynthia Cockburn, The Material of Male Power, in The Social Shaping of Technology, ed. In 1939, the Vichy regime removed Ellul from his teaching post at Strasbourg University for allegedly making subversive statements. Though influenced by Marx, Ellul looked to technique rather than forces of production or class struggle as his key to understanding modern society. No single one provides a comprehensive summary of his conclusions, but the best starting point remains his most famous book, The Technological Society, published in French in 1954 and in English a decade later. Again, technology may be considered an autonomous interlocking system, which develops by its own inherent logic, extended to the control of social institutions. Man was created to have room to move about in, to gaze into far distances, to live in rooms which, even when they were tiny, opened out on fields. Church and state have different roles but can cooperate for human welfare in society. In any case, Ellul is better at tearing down than building up, write Greenman, Schuchardt, and Toly. Values are built into particular technological designs. The future (and the now) according to Jacques Ellul: Deterministic or Gabriel Marcel, The Sacred in the Technological Age, Theology Today 19 (1962): 2738. Need-oriented values and local human benefits would then play a larger part in technological change.35, The political scientist Victor Ferkiss expresses hope about the redirection of technology. Contextualists often seek environmental protection because they are aware of the natural as well as the social contexts in which technologies operate. J. Wilkinson (New York: Knopf, 1964); also The Technological System, trans. The attitudes toward technology outlined in this chapter can be correlated with the typology of historic Christian attitudes toward society set forth by H. Richard Niebuhr.43 At the one extreme is accommodation to society. In 1954, Ellul appealed to all sleepers to awake. This view tends to be more pessimistic about social change, but it does not advocate withdrawal from society. If we are convinced that nothing can be done to improve the system, we will indeed do nothing to try to improve it. Other contextualists have pointed to the role of technology in the subordination of women. Cheris Kramarae (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988). Yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities. We are in the midst of a technological panic. The dominant class will be scientists, engineers, and technical experts; the dominant institutions will be intellectual ones (universities, industrial laboratories, and research institutes). 36. One respondent, the Jesuit priest and English professor Walter Ong, who would later become best known for his work on orality and literacy, agreed with much of Ellul's essay but said that "he makes technology a Samuel Matlack is managing editor of The New Atlantis. From the Princeton University Anthropology news, Based on his 2017 Gifford Lectures, David Novaks Athens and Jerusalem: God, Humans, an, Born in 1955 in Australia, Peter Harrison is an Australian Laureate Fellow and Director of the In, Over 100 years of lectures on natural theology, Professor David N. Hempton to Deliver the 202021 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. We are cut off from our natural surroundings. Ellul calls for personal acts of auto-critique, humility and authentic liberty. 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. 38. The large scale of many current systems is as much the product of government subsidies, tax and credit policies, and particular corporate interests as of any inherent economies of scale. His works on sociology and theologywhich earned him some acclaim in English-speaking countrieswent largely unread in his native France. . Teaser photo credit:Jacques Ellul, the Karl Marx of the 20th century. Technology has been celebrated as the source of material progress and human fulfillment. 47. Technological determinism underestimates the diversity of forces that contribute to technological change. Norman Faramelli, Technethics (New York: Friendship Press, 1971). Similarly, nuclear power has well-documented negative secondary effects, but can the same be said for solar power? Bernard Gendron, Technology and the Human Condition (New York: St. Martins Press, 1977). They swore that social media would help citizens fight bad governments and would connect all of us. endobj The means of production were controlled by a small group within the Communist party, not by the workers. Pandemonium, which examines the impact of global trade on disease exchanges, received widespread national acclaim. 1 0 obj STAS - Different selected views on technology. - Studocu 14. Sojourners could readily devote an issue to himand did just . Biotechnology, for example, depends directly on recent research in molecular biology. John Zerman and Alice Carnes. They claim that any problems created by technology are themselves amenable to technological solutions. Philosophy of Technology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Several components of the theory are controversial and in need of critical empirical investigation. A reader could be forgiven for throwing the book down at this point and pining for that blissful time just prior to the discovery of the works of Jacques Ellul. The criterion is efficiency in achieving a single goal or a narrow range of objectives; side effects and human costs are ignored. This volume gives me the welcome and highly useful opportunity to address Jacques Ellul's (1964 [1954]) classic work, The Technological Society, from the context of my work on social theory, the McDonaldization of society, and the age of the prosumer. 4. pGBBB5afr 25Y) diEu2. The breadth of the definition also reminds us that there are major differences among technologies. In practice, few did. The Technological Society is crammed to bursting with similar instances of wild speculation masquerading as ironclad certainty. 10, ed. 1. 7. So me examples in the choice of designs for agricultural harvesters, nuclear reactors, and computer-controlled manufacturing are discussed in later chapters. Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1980), also The Modern Babylon Culture, in Technology and Responsibility, ed. They had great respect for the created world ordered by God, and they called for social justice and the redirection of cultural life. Ellul was a man who defied easy categorization: a legal scholar, sociologist, theologian, poet, historian, and philosopher (though he eschewed that label), his contribution to each of these genres was idiosyncratic. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: The Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. x. Translation copyright c by David Lovekin and Carl Mitcham.). Andrew's latest book,Empire of the Beetle, a startling look at pine beetles and the worlds most powerful landscape, Tags: building resilient societies, fake news, techno-optimists, Technology, By Multiple organizations, 4Liberation.org. K. C. Smith (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1937). I will indicate why I agree with the third of these positions, which emphasizes the social construction and use of particular technologies. 10. Roger Shinn, Forced Options: Social Decisions for the 21st Century, 3d ed. The mysterious is merely that which has not yet been technicized. 1965), and The Responsibility of the Christian in a World of Technology, in Science and Religion, ed. By the nineteenth (19th) century the bourgeoisie recognized technique as the key to their material and commercial interests. Views of the Interactions of Science, Technology, and Society. 44. We have let technology define the good life in terms of production and consumption, and we have ended with mindless labor and mindless leisure. Technological Pessimism - Holds that technology is progressive and beneficial in many ways, but it is also doubtful in many ways. Computer enthusiasts anticipate the Information Age in which industry is automated and communications networks enhance commercial, professional, and personal life. We must do so, first, as the name of compassion. Technological optimism believes that technology is the answer to all man's problems. He parsed the dynamics of technology with a cold lucidity. Morning Bid: Another one bites the dust | Reuters - Technology has consequences. Machines, whether mechanical or digital, arent interested in truth, beauty or justice. Some technologies seem to be neutral if they can be used for good or evil according to the goals of the users. It is only in the process of giving one's mind and soul to Christ, according to Ellul, that one is set free from the false gods of the material worldand this includes the god of technique. Ramsey sees this advance in science and technology as a mixed blessing. Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1980), also The Modern Babylon Culture, in Technology and Responsibility, ed. A synthesis of christianity and society has been advocated historically by the Roman Catholic Church. Ellul believed that Christians had a special duty to condemn the worship of technology, which has become societys new religion. Unrelieved pessimism undercuts human action and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. All aspects of a new technologythe destructive as well as the productivewill inevitably be used, according to Ellul, and we will often tap into the destructive uses first because it is easier, and more lucrative, to fashion a blunt weapon than a socially beneficial tool. Chapter 1: Views of Technology - Ethics in an Age of Technology 27. Buckminster Fuller, The Critical Path (New York: St. Martins Press, 1981); Herman Kahn et al., The Next 200 Years (New York: William Morrow, 1976); Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Bantam, 1971) and The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow, 1980). By 1975, two thirds of the pumps had broken down because the users lacked the skills and maintenance networks to operate them. To Ellul, freedom is only possible when one submits wholly to the will of God, which one does by embracing Christian revelation. In linear development it is assumed that science leads to technology, which in turn has an essentially one-way impact on society. It is no longer merely a means and an intermediary. It is probably clear from my summary that The Technological Society is vulnerable to criticism from several angles. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo May 1 (Reuters) - A look at the day ahead in U.S. and . Defense of the Personal. Economic growth and lower prices for consumers are often more important than additional safety, and absolute safety is an illusory goal. Preoccupation with technology does become a form of idolatry, a denial of the sovereignty of God, and a threat to distinctively human existence. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). But the place of technique began to change dramatically in the eighteenth (18th) century with the quest for efficient procedures to find the one best means in every human endeavor. Highlights La technique is an all-encompassing term involving the quest for the 'best way' to attain any objective. Marxists are thus as critical as the pessimists concerning the consequences of technology within capitalism but as enthusiastic as the optimists concerning its potentialitieswithin a proletarian economic order. 13. But in 1954, just a year before American scientists started working on artificial intelligence, Ellul wrote his monumental book,The Technological Society. (The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works, Palihapitiya hassaid.). Jacques Ellul, technology doomsdayer before his time Bernard Gendron, Technology and the Human Condition (New York: St. Martins Press, 1977). Cynthia Cockburn, The Material of Male Power, in The Social Shaping of Technology, ed. The technologies needed there must be relatively inexpensive and labor-intensive. Remembering the maverick physicist who pioneered an anthropic approach to cosmology. This would appear to be a clear-cut case of attempting to solve the problems of technique with more technique, when the questions ought to be: Why are we using so much power? Strong gender divisions are present among employees of technology-related companies. In some renditions, the ways in which technology shapes culture are forgotten while the cultural forces on technology are scrutinized. 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. 4 0 obj Laborsaving devices free us to do what machines cannot do. Ellul sees technique everywhere: at the highest levels of government, in the economy, in our educational institutions, in our media, in our workplaces, in our churches, and even in our kitchenshe devotes a surprising amount of ink to the concerted and entirely successful propaganda campaign by the food industry to soften the publics views toward industrially produced bread, an innovation that was initially resisted. 25. Separate technologies form an interlocking system, a total, mutually reinforcing network that seems to lead a life of its own. Technological Pessimism - this view is extremely supported by French philosopher Jacques Ellul. The contextualists reply that the design of a technology is itself affected by social relations. The Pentagon of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967 and 1969). 2 0 obj Pace adds living things among the ordered systems (in order to include agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology), but I suggest that these are already included under the rubric of practical tasks. Frederick Ferr. Kinder, Gentler Colonialism: Bungling Billionaires and Their Arrogant Adventures in Saving the World, Decolonizing Black Womens Health Through Land Reparations.