ellul's pessimistic arguments about technology

Computerized offices differ greatly from steel mills and auto assembly lines, even if they share some features in common. Peter G. Makukhin (a)*, Yevgeny A. Mezentsev (b), Natalia V. Solomina (b), Elena V. . These authors say that social justice and environmental protection should not be ignored, but they must not be allowed to jeopardize economic goals. Liberation from bondage to nature, he says, is the victory of spirit over matter. All three were members of the first Jacques Ellul Society, which met frequently in the 1990s to discuss the implications of industrialization, globalization, and the nascent digital revolution. 24. 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. eds., Questioning Technology (Santa Cruz, CA: New Society Publishers, 1991), p. 217. Opportunity for Choice. The future (and the now) according to Jacques Ellul: Deterministic or Social controls over the controllers are always essential. The place to begin, they say, is one's own life. To Ellul, freedom is only possible when one submits wholly to the will of God, which one does by embracing Christian revelation. Ellul calls for personal acts of auto-critique, humility and authentic liberty. The issues cut across disciplines; I draw from the writings of engineers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and theologians. 24. In this chapter, views of technology are grouped under three headings: Technology as Liberator, Technology as Threat, and Technology as Instrument of Power. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). Technology, he wrote, cant put up with human values and must necessarily don mathematical vestments. Their proliferation combined with our growing dependence on their services inevitably led to an erosion of human freedom and unintended consequences in every sphere of life. But the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling. 3. Tellingly, most of these solutions involve more technology. Lastly, we must question the linear view of the science-technology-society relationship, which is assumed by many proponents of optimistic views. Higher Living Standards. 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. The near catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 were the products of human errors, faulty equipment, poor design, and unreliable safety procedures. This emphasizes again that technique is really the Milieu in which modern humanity is placed. But they do not consider the institutional structures of economic power and self-interest that now control the directions of technological development. But it also is idealistic in its demands for social justice in the distribution of the fruits of technology. 29. This technical milieu involves, on the human side, a complete re-examination of ancient modes of behavior, or physiological capacities (cf. In this instance we have sought to be more literal than on other occasions when technique has been rendered as technology and socit technicienne as technological society. 2 The French text mis-titles this volume Sept essais. The replacement of workers by machines was intended not only to reduce labor costs but also to assert greater control by management over labor. According to the critics, there is little evidence that an electronic, computerized, automated society will produce more diversity than earlier industrialism did. Paul Tillich, The Person in a Technological Society, in Social Ethics, ed. The simple pleasures of making music, hiking and running, gathering with friends around the hearth, or engaging in creative and self-reliant work should be our goals. But his confidence really lay in the unity, convergence, and ascent of the cosmic process of which humanity and technology are manifestations. 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. Appraisals of modern technology diverge widely. Only two possibilities are left to the individual, he writes. 36. 2. Aquinas held that there is both a revealed law, known through scripture the church, and a natural law, built into the created order and accesable human reason. In many respects global society resembles the Soviet Union just prior to its collapse when hypernormalization ruled the day. On the surface, he appeared to be a thinker nearly torn apart by his contradictions, yet the deeper one goes into his writing, the chief quality one encounters is continuity. STAS - Different selected views on technology. - Studocu 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. The optimists are confident that technical solutions can be found for environmental problems. So me examples in the choice of designs for agricultural harvesters, nuclear reactors, and computer-controlled manufacturing are discussed in later chapters. One of his heroes is Benjamin Franklin, who proposed technological ways of coping with the unpleasant consequences of technology.12 Florman holds that environmental and health risks are inherent in every technical advance. Elle puise les ressources naturelles. Commitment to justice within nations also requires a more serious analysis of the distribution of the fonts and benefits of technology. Defend your principles. 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. <> Each has maintained its distinctive knowledge base and methods while contributing to the other and to its patrons as well.45. 28. February 04, 2021 11:00 PM. The ancient dream of a life free from famine and disease is beginning to be realized through technology. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), See also Carl Mitcham, Technology as a Theological Problem in the Christian Tradition, in Theology and Technology, ed. Biotechnology, for example, depends directly on recent research in molecular biology. Thomas Derr, Conversations about Ultimate Matters: Theological Motifs in WCC Studies in the Technological Future, International Review of Missions 66 (1977): 12334. Another critique worth considering is that Elluls definition of technique casts too wide a net. Because there are choices, public policy decisions about technology play a larger role here than in either of the other views. 11. Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1980), also The Modern Babylon Culture, in Technology and Responsibility, ed. It is probably clear from my summary that The Technological Society is vulnerable to criticism from several angles. This would give to the commercial sponsors of technology the choices that are ours as responsible citizens. 6. Yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities. An isotope separator can enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear reactors or for aggression with nuclear weapons. Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. 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. But an ancillary development like power steering doesnt carry much discernible downside. In an urban industrial society, a person's options are not as limited by parental or community expectations as they were in a small-town agrarian society. Barbour. Carl Mitcham and Jim Grote (New York: University Press of America, 1984). 28. The people who make most of the decisions about technology today are not a technical elite or technocrats trying to run society rationally or disinterested experts whose activity was supposed to mark the end of ideology. The decisions are made by managers dedicated to the interests of institutions, especially industrial corporations and government bureaucracies. He didnt travel much, criticized politics of every stripe and was a radical Christian. Technological Determinism. Each of us can adopt individual life-styles more consistent with human and environmental values. The technician treats everything as a problem that can be solved by manipulative techniques without personal involvement. - Technology has consequences. well, progress must not be impeded! Joan Rothschild (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983) see also articles by Cheris Kramarae, Anne Machung, and others in Technology and Womens Voices, ed. By hard work, community cooperation, and frugal ways, they have prospered in agriculture and have continued their distinctive life-styles and educational patterns. 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. 45. 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. 18. 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.

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