“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
In the mid-1950s the French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote a book titled The Technological Society. In sit he proposed that technology, or more broadly what he called technique, was enslaving mankind. In this video we explore this fascinating, yet terrifying thesis.
“The number of “technical slaves is growing rapidly, and the ideal of all governments is to push as fast as possible toward technical enslavement.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
A technological society is one that is dominated by what Ellul called technique. Technique is a method of action, or a means for achieving ends, that prioritizes efficiency above all else. Technique, in other words, searches for the one best way to solve a problem or accomplish a task, and in its search for optimal solutions it disregards broader moral, aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural considerations. Or as Ellul explains:
“. . .technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Ellul believed that technique had become the dominant ordering principle of society, and he identified several subdivisions of technique. Firstly, there is the machine. Machines are the ultimate manifestation of technique as they constantly evolve in pursuit of greater efficiency, they deliver consistent and precise results at speed and scale, and they strip away the variability that defines many other human endeavours. The spread of the machine into ever more domains of life, is reflective of our tendency to view most problems through a technical mindset. Machines, however, are but one manifestation of technique, or as Ellul wrote:
“The machine is now not even the most important aspect of technique (though it is perhaps the most spectacular); technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his productive activity.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Another subdivision of technique is economic technique, which is the application of rational methods of organizing and managing the economy in pursuit of maximum efficiency. Economic technique seeks to optimize metrics such as the employment rate, GDP level, and the rate of inflation. When an economy becomes the object of technique, the spontaneous order of markets gives way to centralized planning and control by technocrats, i.e., specialists who apply technical methods and systems to manipulating economic outcomes, often without regard for competing environmental, moral, or ethical concerns.
A third subdivision of technique is what Ellul called organizational technique and refers to methods for efficiently coordinating, managing, and controlling large groups of people—whether in the military, government, corporations, or society at large. Organizational technique leads to the bureaucratization of life, as ever-increasing layers of rules, procedures, and administrative systems are implemented to control group behaviour.
The final subdivision of technique is human technique, and this is technique applied to the functioning of the human organism, whether in its biological or psychological form. Human technique encompasses fields such as education, medicine, genetic engineering, psychology, advertising and the use of propaganda. Human technique seeks the most efficient and rational ways to influence, condition, and control human beings in body and mind, and as Ellul explains, with human technique, “man himself becomes the object of technique.”
These four subdivisions of technique reveal how its application has infiltrated all areas of society. Machines are constantly used in both our personal lives and in the production and distribution of goods and services; economic and organisational technique structures our work life, government institutions, the monetary system, and social trends in general; while human technique shapes not only the health or sickness of our physical body, but also influences what we desire, how we think, and how we act.
“. . . it might be said that technique is the translation into action of man’s concern to master things by means of reason, to account for what is subconscious, make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and precise the outlines of nature, take hold of chaos and put order into it.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
What is the problem with the compulsive drive to apply technique to all aspects of life? Why shouldn’t we attempt to order to the world around us through the most efficient and rational means possible?
According to Ellul, the danger lies in the fact that as technique becomes more ubiquitous a new form of totalitarianism emerges, one that enslaves us through control by the machines, systems and procedures of technique. Under this form of totalitarianism, the loss of freedom is not the result of the intentional acts of a small group of people, and it doesn’t require a conspiracy of a ruling elite. Rather this totalitarianism occurs of its own volition, for as Ellul explains in The Technological Society, we have now reached a point where technique has taken on a life of its own, or as he writes:
“Technique has become autonomous; it has fashioned an omnivorous world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all tradition. Technique no longer rests on tradition, but rather on previous technical procedures; and its evolution is too rapid, too upsetting, to integrate the older traditions.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Ellul believed that as the use of technique spreads, it gains its own momentum. For when technique is applied to a task, it opens new pathways for its further development or creates new problems that must be solved with the use of more technique. For example, the invention of computers led to the production of ever greater amounts of data, necessitating the development of ways to store this data, as well as methods to analyze it. As data analytic and storage techniques advanced, this made possible new forms of surveillance, new ways to measure and manipulate the economy, and new ways to develop artificial intelligence systems. Similarly, the development of the internet gave rise to social networks, which in turn generated new communication techniques and powerful new techniques for the large-scale distribution of propaganda. In a self-perpetuating cycle, technique begets more technique and increasingly all of life is swallowed up in the drive for technical control and efficiency, or as Ellul explains:
“. . . technique, in its development, poses primarily technical problems which consequently can be resolved only by technique. The present level of technique brings on new advances, and these in turn add to existing technical difficulties and technical problems, which demand further advances still.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Or as Iain McGilchrist writes in The Master and His Emissary:
“Increasing technologisation and bureaucratisation of life help to erode the more integrative modes of attention to people and things which might help us resist the advances of technology and bureaucracy, so that in this way they aid their own replication.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
As technique spreads throughout a society, it changes the very nature of man. For technique is a dehumanizing force if relied upon too heavily. In the pursuit of rational efficiency, it moves man away from his traditions, away from the natural world and away from aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values. It transforms man from a subject interacting with the world, to an object manipulated for technical ends. Or as McGilchrist explains, there is a“…difficulty in maintaining one’s integrity as a unique, individual subject, in a world where a combination of the hubris of science and the drive of technology blots out the awe-inspiring business of conscious human existence . . .and replaces it with a set of technical problems for which they purport to have solutions. . .in such circumstances we would be too easily persuaded to accept the role thrust upon us, to become an object, no longer a subject, and would connive at our own annihilation.” (Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary)
Technique’s relentless pursuit of the most efficient means – the “one best way” – comes at the expense of values that have long been central to the human experience. One such value is beauty. When decisions are governed solely by efficiency, beauty is treated as a luxury or ignored completely. The disregard for beauty is visible in modern architecture. In many cities, aesthetic values are no longer a primary factor in the construction of buildings, instead the emphasis is on efficiency. For example, in the building of housing the focus is on minimizing costs and building as many units as possible given the constraints of land. Technique applied to architecture has resulted in skylines filled with uniform looking glass-and-concrete skyscrapers, and sprawling suburbs composed of cheap, efficient, cookie cutter houses.
Technique further dehumanizes us by entrapping us within an artificial world of its own making.
“The world that is being created by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and hence radically different from the natural world.”
Jacques Ellul, Technological Society
Most people spend more time staring at screens and absorbed in the artificial worlds of social media, video games, and movies than they do in nature. Most people work jobs that force them to spend all day controlled by the machines and systems of technique. While governments and corporations are increasingly using technique to control our behaviour and manipulate our thoughts. Wherever we turn, technique is grasping hold of us and moving us further and further away from the rhythms and flows of the natural world.
A technical mindset also results in a loss of connection with intuition, which is one of the most powerful means of acquiring truth, while also crucial to the creative process, or as McGilchrist writes:
“If humans behave mechanistically, they fail: intuition is faster and smarter. A constant insistence on dis-attending to intuitions and placing reliance instead on standard assessment forms and checklists replaces the unmeasurable but often astute assessment of a real human being with the bogus precision and lack of individual flexibility of a machine.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
The dangers of a technological society, however, do not end with its dehumanization. For technique is a centralizing force that strips man of his freedom while concentrating power in the hands of a relative few. Some believe the opposite to be true, they see technique, specifically in its technological manifestations as a decentralizing force that will help return freedom to an unfree world, but as Ellul wrote:
“The idea of effecting decentralization while maintaining technical progress is purely utopian.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
In truth, the history of technical progress is also a history of centralization. The advance of technique has permitted the growth of vast centralized institutions such as the modern state, military, and corporations, whose combined power shapes nearly every aspect of life. Machines such as computers, cameras and smartphones, allow for an unprecedented level of surveillance, which promotes control by centralized states. The internet has allowed for the instantaneous and global distribution of propaganda. Military technique, through increasingly destructive machines of war, has enabled conquest on an unprecedented scale and created a vast power disparity between those who control the weapons of war and those who do not. Economic technique, especially applied to the creation of credit and the manipulation of the money supply, has created a debt-based economic system that greatly enriches a select few and holds the rest of us at a relatively impoverished state. While organizational technique has birthed sprawling bureaucracies that regulate almost all aspects of life and grant immense power to those who control these bureaucratic systems.
“Primitive man, hemmed in by prohibitions, taboos, and rites, was, of course, socially determined. But it is an illusion – unfortunately very widespread – to think that because we have broken through the prohibitions, taboos, and rites that bound primitive man, we have become free. We are conditioned by something new: technological civilization.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
The centralizing force of technique, if unchecked, will continue to enslave us. It will create a world where men and women are increasingly measured, molded, directed and controlled by the machines, systems, and processes of technique. All the while many people will cheer on the advance of technique in the belief that it represents social progress, not realizing that with each advance our personal autonomy declines, or as Ellul explains:
“With the final integration of the instinctive and the spiritual by means of [innovations in] human techniques, the edifice of the technical society will be completed. It will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane, for everything will be ordered, and the stains of human passion will be lost amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing more to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest instincts and our most secret passions will be analyzed, published, and exploited.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Can we avoid a further descent into a technological enslavement? Can we find a healthy balance between the natural and the artificial? Between efficiency and other human values? Ellul was unsure, or as he put it:
“He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom. In the modern world, the most dangerous form of determinism is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it. How is this to be done? I do not yet know. That is why this book is an appeal to the individual’s sense of responsibility. The first step in the quest, the first act of freedom, is to become aware of the necessity.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Iain McGilchrist, who was influenced by Ellul’s writings, offered an even more dire assessment in his 2021 book The Matter With Things:
“By now, it may be too late. Some people already seem to believe we are better off in the hands of our new masters, the machines.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
Ellul, however, did see a few ways that the iron grip of technique could be loosened. One way was through social collapse. For example, a severe economic depression or a world war would halt the advance of technique, but at the cost of great suffering. Or as Ellul wrote: “If a general war breaks out, and if there are any survivors, the destruction will be so enormous, and the conditions of survival so different, that a technological society will no longer exist.”
Another way to avoid a continuing descent into technological enslavement is if more people wake up to the fact that that there is much more to life than technological advance. For while technique has its role to play, when it starts to crowd out other values and to interfere with creative, aesthetic, or spiritual pursuits, its use has extended beyond healthy limits. If enough of us recognize this and change our lives accordingly, then perhaps technique can be relegated to its proper role of servant, rather than master of man. Or as Ellul wrote:
“If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological world poses to man’s personal and spiritual life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution, my forecast will be invalidated.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
But if we fail to heed Ellul’s warning our society will increasingly be ruled by machines and controlled by technique. We will continue to lose our basic humanity and become detached from the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual values that fill life with meaning and purpose. We will become the optimized components of a technological society, a society that values human life only to the degree that it furthers the autonomous development of technique. Or Ellul forewarned:
“. . .if man—if each one of us—abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinants [of a technological enslavement] will be transformed into inevitabilities.”
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Share this post