ellul's pessimistic arguments about technologysenior principal scientist bms salary
In a bureaucracy, the goals of the organization are paramount and responsibility is diffused, so that no one feels personally responsible. I describe a world with no prospects but I have the conviction that God accompanies man throughout history. He added: I believe that what I have to say about Christianity is open to everyone including non-believers. Melvin Kranzberg, Technology the Liberator. in Technology at the Turning Point, ed. Impersonality and Manipulation Relationships in a technological society are specialized and functional. Andrew Nikiforukhas been writing about the oil and gas industry for nearly 20 years and cares deeply about accuracy, government accountability, and cumulative impacts. A larger number, however, see technology as an ambiguous instrument of social power. 30. The industrialized technical employment of technique became a monster in the urbanized and technological society of the twentieth (20th) century, the stake of the century as Ellul termed it. Automation gave engineers and managers increased power over workers, who no longer needed special skills. Everything in human life that does not lend itself to mathematical treatment must be excluded Who is too blind to not see that a profound mutation is being advocated here.. Once armed with one (or all three) of these introductory texts, one is well poised to begin wrestling with the genuine item. . The work of astronomers, for instance, has been dependent on a succession of new technologies, from optical telescopes to microwave antennae and rockets. endobj The technical elite likewise serves the profits of the owners. This contrasts strongly with the greater work autonomy, job satisfaction, and commitment to work found in the professions, skilled trades, and family-owned farms.21, Other features of technological development since World War II have evoked widespread concern. The human fabric is not an envelope around a culturally neutral artifact. We have seen that a few theologians are technological optimists, while others have adopted pessimistic positions. Each element has a meaning or significance only within the ensemble. 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. 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. Their goal is to make the world a more efficient place for more machines. Mental illness reaches epidemic levels. 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. 2 0 obj Unqualified devotion to technology as a total way of life, they say, is a form of idolatry. True, there are the technicians, those who cook up and implement these new solutions, but Ellul contends that they themselves are under the control of technique, driven on by the compulsion always to search for that one best way, because. So me examples in the choice of designs for agricultural harvesters, nuclear reactors, and computer-controlled manufacturing are discussed in later chapters. Several components of the theory are controversial and in need of critical empirical investigation. Such an obsession with things distorts our basic values as well as our relationships with other persons. It brings together celebration of human creativity and suspicion of human power. It is impossible to have confidence in men who apparently lack these faculties. Education Virtualization Prospects In Pessimistic Light Of 1965), and The Responsibility of the Christian in a World of Technology, in Science and Religion, ed. <>>> Main theologians who do not totally reject technology criticize its tendency to generate a Promethean pride and a quest for unlimited power. Using the Internet the government can nowtrackthe movements of every citizen and rank their political trustworthiness based on their history of purchases and associations. Good citizens today now leave their screens at work only to be guided by robots in their cars that tell them the most efficient route to drive home. . Alvin Weinberg, Can Technology Replace Social Engineering, in Technology and the Future, ed. Life is indeed impoverished if the technological attitudes of mastery and power dominate one's outlook. 10, ed. . Technological Pessimism - Holds that technology is progressive and beneficial in many ways, but it is also doubtful in many ways. John W. Staudenmaier, Technologys Storytellers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p. 16. Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. In subsequent chapters we will examine each of these specific claims as well as the general attitudes they reveal. In China the authorities have gone one step further. It does systematically impose distinctive forms on all areas of life, but these can be modified through political processes. 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. 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 the context of the philosophy of technology by J. Ellul. J. Wilkinson (New York: Knopf, 1964); also The Technological System, trans. 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. Highlights La technique is an all-encompassing term involving the quest for the 'best way' to attain any objective. by James McElroy. Uniformity in a Mass Society. When social planners think they are deciding for the good of allwhether in the French or Russian revolutions or in the proposed technocracy of the futurethe assumed innocence of moral intentions is likely to be corrupted in practice. Samuel Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (New York: St. Martins Press, 1977) and Blaming Technology: The Irrational Search for Scapegoats (New York: St. Martins Press, 1981). The Washington Post noted his passing in a few scant paragraphs. Decisions will be made on rational-technical grounds, marking the end of ideology. There will be a general consensus on social values; experts will coordinate social planning, using rational techniques such as decision theory and systems analysis. As an example consider Norman Faramelli, an engineer with theological training, who writes in a framework of christian ideas: stewardship of creation, concern for the dispossessed, and awareness of the corrupting influence of power. The ultimate source of that unity and ascent is God as known in the Christ whose role is cosmic. People have much greater freedom in technological societies. 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. Ian G. Barbour (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). Elle s'auto-accrot en suivant sa propre logique. What is required is thus a global change in our habits or values, the rediscovery of either an existential ethics or a new ontology. Western thought since the Renaissance has increasingly encouraged man the master of nature; secular and reductionistic assumptions have prevailed. Ellul, the Karl Marx of the 20th century, predicted the chaotic tyranny many of us now pretend is the good and determined life in technological society. And a whole new arsenal of human techniquestherapy, pharmaceuticals, mass mediaemerges to help us adjust to our ever-increasing dislocation. Of course, pollution abatement technologies can treat many of the effluents of industry, but often unexpected, indirect, or delayed consequences occur. Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). Whatever guidance is needed for technological development is supplied by the expression of consumer preferences through the marketplace. 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. Placing technique at the center of our world carries physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences: Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. ), His was largely an interior disposition, yet he lived in an era that demanded action. endobj 4. - 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 Ellul proposes a form of reflection based on dialectical tensions, thus opening the way to . 3. They swore that social media would help citizens fight bad governments and would connect all of us. It is no longer merely a means and an intermediary. 49. In an affluent society there is time for continuing education, the arts, social service, sports, and participation in community life. The Silicon Valley moguls and the digerati promised something less totalitarian. 40. See also Charles Susskind, Understanding Technology. J. Edward Carothers, Margaret Mead, Daniel McCracken, and Roger Shinn, eds., To Love or to Perish: The Technological Crisis and the Churches (New York: Friendship Press, 1972); Paul Abrecht and Roger Shinn, eds., Faith and Science in an Unjust World (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980). 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. Queen Elizabeths death inaugurates an uncertain new era. If the DCs will then make a matching contribution to the revenues from their general taxa-tion, on the ground that a selective immigration pol-icy is likely to bring general externalities to the DCs, the total UN receipts from the proposed tax would rise to one billion U.S. dollars. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) and The Reactor and the Whale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). (Translated by Dominique Gillot and Carl Mitcham from Recherche pour une Ethique dans une socit technicienne, Morale et Enseignement (1983), pp. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our ageto what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.. Let us look at some authors who have expressed optimism regarding technology. The fact of the matter is that when one begins to read Ellul, understanding increases. George Wise, Science and Technology. Osiris, 2d ser., 1 (1985): 22946. Ellul wasnt just worried about the impact of a single gadget such as the television or the phone but the phenomenon of technical convergence., He feared the impact of systems or complexes of techniques on human society and warned the result could only be an operational totalitarianism., Convergence, he wrote, is a completely spontaneous phenomenon, representing a normal stage in the evolution of technique.. Why? A machine or process may have been the result of creative practical innovation or the modification of an existing technology. The Technological Society is crammed to bursting with similar instances of wild speculation masquerading as ironclad certainty. Joan Rothschild (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983) see also articles by Cheris Kramarae, Anne Machung, and others in Technology and Womens Voices, ed. While many of its expressions were short-lived, many of its characteristic attitudes, including disillusionment with technology, have persisted among some of the younger generation.22. Roslyn Feldberg and Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Technology and Work Degradation: Effects of Office Automation on Women Clerical Workers, in Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology, ed. This position holds that social change (including the redirection of technology) is possible, but it is difficult because of the structures of group self-interest and institutional power. 4. 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. A Theory of the Effects of Advanced Information Technologies on Whereas the first two groups give little emphasis to politics, the third, with which I agree, holds that conflicts concerning technology must be resolved primarily in the political arena. Choices that could only be made and enforced collectivelysuch as laws concerning air and water pollutionwere resisted AS infringements on free enterprise. Power over nature gives greater opportunity for the exercise of human freedom.6. However, we may now be in the presence of the progressive elaboration of such a reactive capability. To the French philosopher and social critic Jacques Ellul, technology is an autonomous and uncontrollable force that dehumanizes all that it touches. 23. Resistance, which is never futile, can only begin by becoming aware and bearing witness to the totalitarian nature of technological society. Technology is imperialistic and addictive, according to these critics. By autonomous, Ellul meant that technology had become a determining force that "elicits and conditions social, political and economic change." The role of propaganda The French critic was the first to note that technologies build upon each other and therefore centralize power and control. 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. Some of the most quotable passages from the book are also its most problematic. It is said that technology is a way of life. . Any opposition is simply absorbed as we become addicted to the products of technology. This is an unrelentingly grim picture. Below, we propose some basic insights, claims, and commitments that all seekers of new societal relations might choose to further develop and refine. <> I accept the basic framework of private ownership in a free market economy, but I believe it has severe limitations that require correction through political processes. Nevertheless, the constant asking of these questions changes a person, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes visibly. For most of them, the most important form of participatory freedom is the economic freedom of the marketplace, though in general they are also committed to political democracy. Another option is the view of Christian life and society as two separate realms, as held in the Lutheran tradition. Technological progress has a price. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, trans. 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). Starting with a historical survey of some key philosophers and writers on technology as it relates to spirituality -- in particular, Henry David Thoreau, Romano Guardini, C.S. 2. In 1939, the Vichy regime removed Ellul from his teaching post at Strasbourg University for allegedly making subversive statements. Almost entirely absent from these discussions is any mention of Jacques Ellul, once regarded alongside Lewis Mumford as one of the worlds foremost critics of unchecked technological development.
