ellul's pessimistic arguments about technology

Calvin, the Reformed and Puritan traditions, the Anglican, and the Methodists all sought a greater expression of Christian values in public life. Borgmann thinks that some large-scale capital-intensive industry is needed (especially in transportation and communication), but he urges the development of small-scale labor-intensive, locally owned enterprises (in arts and crafts, health care, and education, for example). Privileged, almost exclusive relationships exist among the elements of the system, regardless of what is situated outside the system. Queen Elizabeths death inaugurates an uncertain new era. Each of us can adopt individual life-styles more consistent with human and environmental values. 34. ed. It is a universal mediator, producing a generalised mediation, totalizing and aspiring to totality. But see him now, like a fly on flypaper, seated for eight hours, motionless at a desk. The increased death rates among shipyard workers exposed to asbestos in the early 1940s were not evident until the late 1960s. For Ellul, technique, an ensemble of machine-based means, included administrative systems, medical tools, propaganda (just another communication technique) and genetic engineering. Some Third World authors have been beenly aware of technology as an instrument of power, and they portray a two-way interaction between technology and society across national boundaries. The search for omnipotence is a denial of creaturehood. human experience provides a common thread through most of Ellul's work. Victor Ferkiss, Technological Man and The Future of Technological Civilization (New York: George Braziller, 1969 and 1974). Technological Pessimism holds that technology is progressive and beneficial in many ways, it is also doubtful in many ways. Rather, it means consciously choosingknowing both the upsides and downsides of any technique or machinewhether or not to use it, rather than simply saying that we must use it. They can sell their labor as a commodity, but their work is not a meaningful form of self-expression. An isotope separator can enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear reactors or for aggression with nuclear weapons. 3. The automobile, for example, enables people to do what they want and enhances geographical and class mobility. K. C. Smith (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1937). The issues cut across disciplines; I draw from the writings of engineers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and theologians. Schuurman says that technology was given a messianic role as the source of salvation, and under the rule of human sin it has ended by enslaving us so we are exiles in Babylon. But we can be converted to seek God's Kingdom, which comes as a gift, not by human effort. Mitcham and Grote. There were just effects and all technologies were disruptive. In 1939, the Vichy regime removed Ellul from his teaching post at Strasbourg University for allegedly making subversive statements. A couple of years ago the big topic of handwringing was drones. Technology is not a neutral means to human ends but an all-encompassing system that imposes its patterns on every aspect of life and thought.25. 40. To subscribe now, go here. But it is more skeptical about the exercise power by the institutional church, and it looks instead to the activity of the layperson in society. . His efforts to smuggle Jews out of the country earned him a posthumous designation of Righteous Among the Nations from the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. See also Charles Susskind, Understanding Technology. . Technology is indivisible and universal because everywhere it goes it shows the same deterministic face with the same consequences. It is an object in itself, an independent reality with which we must reckon.. This article sets forth a theory of the effects that computer-assisted communication and decision-aiding technologies have on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making. Inevitably, communities are torn asunder. Whats more, technique is amoral. To be fair to the current critics, Ellul did not leave behind an easily summarized philosophy after he died in 1994. The worker becomes the servant of the machine, adjusting to its schedule and tempo, adapting to its requirements. Linear Development. And what is freedom but the ability to overcome and transcend the dictates of necessity? Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. But Ellul never intended for his readers to stop there. Niebuhr Cites the example of liberal theologians of the nineteenth century who had little to say concerning sin, revelation, or grace. J. Neugroschel (New York: Continuum, 1980), and The Technological Bluff, trans. I will indicate why I agree with the third of these positions, which emphasizes the social construction and use of particular technologies. Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. 2000 by James A. Fowler. Opportunity for Choice. Similarly, nuclear power has well-documented negative secondary effects, but can the same be said for solar power? The Pentagon of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967 and 1969). It is impossible to have confidence in men who apparently lack these faculties. ed. There was nothing logically or technically necessary about the model that finally won out and now found around the world.46, The historian John Staudenmaier writes that, contextualism is rooted in the proposition that technical designs cannot be meaning fully interpreted in abstraction from their human context. The worker's alienation was a central theme in the writing of Karl Marx. Former Gifford Lecturer John Polkinghorne dies at age 90. J. Neugroschel (New York: Continuum, 1980), and The Technological Bluff, trans. 38. Below, we propose some basic insights, claims, and commitments that all seekers of new societal relations might choose to further develop and refine. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real because no one could imagine any alternative.. The technician treats everything as a problem that can be solved by manipulative techniques without personal involvement. 39. 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. He associated technique with "technology," but extended it well beyond the mechanical processes and devices the term evokes. There is a considerable range of views among contemporary Marxists. 30. He envisioned computers and electronic communication in a network of interconnected consciousness, a global layer of thought that he called the noosphere. He defended eugenics, artificial neo-life, and the remodeling of the human organism by manipulation of the genes. Kipnis claims that the person with technological knowledge-often has not only a potent instrument of control but also a self-image that assumes superiority over people who lack that knowledge and the concomitant opportunities to make decisions affecting their lives.28. Cheris Kramarae (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988). He also urges the upgrading of indigenous technologies, the exploration of intermediate-scale processes, and greater dialogue between experts and users. 11. On the other side, technique constitutes a system in the strict sense of the term (cf. The case for the social construction of technology seems to me much stronger. The Foundation for Responsible Robotics recentlycreateda small stir by asking if sexual intimacy with robots could lead to greater social isolation.. This view is common among the optimists. 14. John W. Staudenmaier, Technologys Storytellers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p. 16. Children raised by screens and vaccinated only by technology will not have the capacity to resist, let alone understand, this world any more than someone born in space could appreciate what it means to walk in a forest. Cf. In this sprawling opus, by turns bracing, challenging, and (to this reader) more than a little exhausting, Ellul identifies technique as the single greatest threat to modern man. But his confidence really lay in the unity, convergence, and ascent of the cosmic process of which humanity and technology are manifestations. More Leisure. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 1. 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). Throughout his life Ellul maintained that he was neither by nature, nor doctrinally, a pessimist, nor have I pessimistic prejudices. EDUCATION VIRTUALIZATION PROSPECTS IN PESSIMISTIC LIGHT OF TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM BY JACQUES ELLUL . At times he seemed to have unlimited confidence in humanity's capacity to shape its own destiny. The dominant class will be scientists, engineers, and technical experts; the dominant institutions will be intellectual ones (universities, industrial laboratories, and research institutes). The optimists are confident that technical solutions can be found for environmental problems. All rights reserved. Pacey gives as one example the Western experts in India and Bangladesh who in the 1960s advised the use of large drilling rigs and diesel pumps for wells, imported from the West. Technological progress has a price b. Jacques Ellul died on May 19. 44. Automation gave engineers and managers increased power over workers, who no longer needed special skills. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York; Macmillan, 1965), p. 69. Here there is a compartmentalization of spiritual and temporal spheres and different standards for personal and public life. 1. The philosopher Hans Jonas is impressed by the new scale of technological power and its influence on events distant in time and place. It is only in the process of giving ones 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. Paul Durbin (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1987), and A Christian Philosophical Perspective on Technology, in Theology and Technology, ed. February 04, 2021 11:00 PM. 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. A third group asserts that technology is ambiguous, its impacts varying according to the social context in which it is designed and used, because it is both a product and a source of economic and political power.4. Ellul believed that the first act of freedom a citizen can exercise is to recognize the necessity of understanding technique and its colonizing powers. We will find many technologies in which one group enjoys the benefits while another group is exposed to the risks and social costs. To further complicate matters, it becomes apparent when one begins to grapple with Ellul that pigeonholing him as a critic of modernity is itself an oversight. Florman, Blaming Technology, p. 183. 36. 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. 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. To Ellul, freedom is only possible when one submits wholly to the will of God, which one does by embracing Christian revelation. 2. 4. . 7. arguments about Western technological development and its ambiguities, especially the aftermath of . Plus que le politique et l'conomie. When Teilhard looked to the past, he portrayed humanity as an integral part of the natural world, interdependent with other creatures. Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. 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. in what he does not say, write Greenman, Schuchardt, and Toly, by espousing no other hope. And so, bereft of material solutions, the reader is supposed to turn to spiritually oriented works such as The Presence of the Kingdom or The Ethics of Freedom. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981). Systems in which human or mechanical failures can be disastrous are risky even in a stable society, quite apart from additional risks under conditions of social unrest. But relative inequalities have increased, so that class distinctions and poverty amidst luxury remain. Roger Shinn, Forced Options: Social Decisions for the 21st Century, 3d ed. Teilhard's writings present us with a magnificent sweep of time from past to future. 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. Laborsaving devices free us to do what machines cannot do. In this new society, according to the sociologist Daniel Bell, power will be based on knowledge rather than property. The ethical problem, that is human behavior, can only be considered in relation to this system, not in relation to some particular technical object or other. Joan Rothschild (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983) see also articles by Cheris Kramarae, Anne Machung, and others in Technology and Womens Voices, ed. - According to Ellul's pessimistic arguments are: 1. technological progress has a price 2. technological progress creates more problems 3. technological progress creates damaging effects 4. technological progress creates unpredictable devastating effects TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIMISM - This view is strongly supported by technologists and engineers and The reverse contribution of technology to science is also often evident. 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. Gibson Winter (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). In practice, few did. 1. What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. By that I mean that hope is transmissible, even without reference to a given God.. Just as Marx deftly outlined how capitalism threw up new social classes, political institutions and economic powers in the 19th century, Ellul charted the ascent of technology and its impact on politics, society and economics in the 20th. Studs Terkel, Working (New York: Pantheon. See for example Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, vol. 8. La technique, pour Ellul, est le facteur dterminant de la socit. In many respects technology has hypernormalized a technological society in which citizens exercise less and less control over their lives every day and cant imagine anything different. Mass production yields standardized products, and mass media tend to produce a uniform national culture. In the public sphere, however, sin must be restrained by the secular structures of authority and order. Samuel Florman, Science for Public Consumption; More Than We Can Chew? Technology Review 86 (April 1983): 1213. In the case of energy, it is claimed that breeder reactors and fusion will provide environmentally benign power to replace fossil fuels. Economic institutions treat nature as a resource for human exploitation. The Christian perfectionists, seeking to maintain their purity and to practice radical obedience, have withdrawn into monasteries or into separate communities, as the Mennonites and Amish have done. We are cut off from our natural surroundings. Ramsey sees this advance in science and technology as a mixed blessing. Technolological determinists will be pessimists if they hold that the consequences of technology are on balance socially and environmentally harmful Moreover, any from of determinism implies a limitation of human freedom and technological choice. By 1975, two thirds of the pumps had broken down because the users lacked the skills and maintenance networks to operate them. There is no one best way to design a technology. Unrelieved pessimism undercuts human action and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because long-term consequences are discounted at the current interest rate, they are virtually ignored in economic decisions. Toxic wastes may contaminate groundwater decades after they have been buried. His most influential sociological book with the English title, The Technological Society, was originally entitled in French, Technique, the Stake of the Century, for example. 7. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1969), and Where the Wasteland Ends (New York: Doubleday, 1972); see Ian G. Barbour, Science, Religion, and the Counterculture, Zygon 10 (1975): 38097. 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. The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, writing in the early year of nuclear power, computers, and molecular biology, expressed a hopeful vision of the technological future. But they do not consider the institutional structures of economic power and self-interest that now control the directions of technological development. 10. Nuclear energy is a prime example of a vulnerable, centralized, capital-intensive technology. . He examines the ramifications of genetic control, not only the now common measures of birth control and artificial insemination, but also the effect on the genetic pool of the increasing numbers of genetically poor individuals. Appraisals of modern technology diverge widely. However, he also believes that it is inevitable and irreversible, meaning that we cannot simply choose to go back to a pre-technological age. The means of production were controlled by a small group within the Communist party, not by the workers. A . 27. A liberated technology could do much to heal the brokenness of nature and society. 49. Here there are six arrows instead of two, representing the complex interactions between science, technology, and society. A key concept for Ellul is freedom, but not freedom as it is commonly understood. Typesetting in large printing frames once required physical strength and mechanical skills and was a male occupation. 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. 17. Many readers will find this a vexing experience. From the editorial pages of USA Today, The Week, and even Wiredwhich devoted an entire issue to this topic in 2017commentators agonize over the societal destabilization caused by the ongoing tech onslaught and grasp at possible solutions: decentralize the Web; create apps to limit our time online or reclaim our lost sleep cycles; improve encryption technology; break up the Big Tech companies or require them to make their algorithms more transparent and/or more racially sensitive; and so on. Another option is the view of Christian life and society as two separate realms, as held in the Lutheran tradition.
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