The Technological Society

This is undoubtedly one of the most important books of the twentieth century, and if you accept its thesis you won't be able to look at the political milieu in the same way ever again. (If you agree with it and it doesn't change the way you look at things, you haven't grasped its importance.) Most political theorists take ideology to be a central point from which "real world" consequences emanate. In other words, a Communist or libertarian ideology in practical use will produce a particular type society and individual divorced from the actual technical workings of the society. Liberals and conservatives both speak of things in such a manner as if ideology is the prima facie cause of existence - but as Ellul shows in painstaking detail, this is wrong. What almost everyone fails to grasp is the pernicious effect of technique (and its offspring, technology) on modern man.

Technique can loosely be defined as the entire mass of organization and technology that has maximum efficiency as its goal. Ellul shows that technique possesses an impetus all its own and exerts similar effects on human society no matter what the official ideology of the society in question is. Technique, with its never-ending quest for maximum efficiency, tends to slowly drown out human concerns as it progresses towards its ultimate goal. "...the further economic technique develops, the more it makes real the abstract concept of economic man." (p. 219) Technique does not confine itself merely to the realm of technical production, but infiltrates every aspect of human existence, and has no time for "inefficiencies" caused by loyalties to family, religion, race, or culture; a society of dumbed-down consumers is absolutely essential to the technological society, which must contain predictable "demographics" in order to ensure the necessary financial returns. "The only thing that matters technically is yield, production. This is the law of technique; this yield can only be obtained by the total mobilization of human beings, body and soul, and this implies the exploitation of all human psychic forces." (p. 324).

Ellul thoroughly shows that much of the difference in ideology between libertarians and socialists becomes largely irrelevant in the technological society (this is not to say that ideology is unimportant, but rather that technique proceeds with the same goals and effects.) This will doubtlessly please no one; liberals want to believe that they can have privacy and freedom despite a high degree of central planning, and libertarians want to believe that a society free of most regulation and control is possible in an advanced technological society. Libertarian fantasies seem especially irrelevant given the exigencies of a technological society; as Ellul notes, as technique progresses it simply cannot function without a high degree of complexity and regulation. "The modern state could no more be a state without techniques than a businessman could be a businessman without the telephone or the automobile... not only does it need techniques, but techniques need it. It is not a matter of chance, nor a matter of conscious will; rather, it is an urgency..." (p. 253-254). Can anyone really doubt Ellul here, especially seeing as how twenty-plus years of conservative promises to downsize government still result in more regulation and bureaucracy with every passing year? Planning, socialism, regulation, and control are the natural consequences of technique; an increasingly incestuous relationship between industry and the State is inevitable. "The state and technique - increasingly interrelated - are becoming the most important forces in the modern world; they buttress and reinforce each other in their aim to produce an apparently indestructible, total civilization." (p. 318).

This is not an optimistic book. Given that the nature of technique is one of a universal leveling of human cultures, needs, and desires (replacing real needs with false ones and the neighborhood restaurant with McDonalds), Ellul is certainly pessimistic. He does not propose any remedies for the Skinnerist nightmares of technique somehow leading to a Golden Age of humanity, where people will enjoy maximal freedom coupled with minimal want: "...we are struck by the incredible naivete of these scientists... they claim they will be in a position to develop certain collective desires, to constitute certain homogeneous social units out of aggregates of individuals, to forbid men to raise their children, and even to persuade them to renounce having any... at the same time, they speak of assuring the triumph of freedom and of the necessity of avoiding dictatorship... they seem incapable of grasping the contradiction involved, or of understanding that what they are proposing." (p. 434).


Amazing   July 15, 2002
27 out of 27 found this review helpful

In this famous volume, Jacques Ellul explores the role of technique in the modern world. In Ellul's view, ordered efficiency is the first and foremost law of the technical world, with widespread implications for human life. Modern man lives under a framework of artificial operational objectives he wasn't designed to cope with. Technique has turned men into mere resources thrown around wherever the technical system finds them most useful.

The technical system is no longer within the reach of human control: it has taken on a life of its own and constitutes an independent force consuming more and more of the non-technical world around it. Men do not use technique: technique uses men. The argument behind this is not as metaphysical as it may appear; in much Ellul is as materialistic as Marx and seeks to penetrate the social reality's "essence" just as Marx did in Capital.

The sociology and philosophy of this work is original, radical and logical. Whether you agree or disagree with Ellul, you are bound to be influenced and impressed by the intellectual effort put into this book.


IMpacts of Technology on human relationships   May 20, 2001
Bill Cook (Tokyo, Japan)
29 out of 31 found this review helpful

I first read this book in college in 1971. It has had more lasting impact upon my view of the world than any other book I read at that time. I go back to it every now and again. Anyone interested in the effects of globalization and the drive to faster and faster technological change and the maximizing of shareholder value should read this book. We are driven to compartmentalize our relationships to become efficient, the ultimate law of technology. Our relationships with our families, our neighbors, our communities, our friends and our government are impacted by the drive for efficiency.


Ellul and decentralization   November 18, 2000
Roy Stucky (KS USA)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

It has been said by some Ellul has proven mistaken because of the decentralization brought by modern technology. This is based on a very common misunderstanding.

When you couple Ellul's "one best way" with the words of another author, the situation becomes clear.

"When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality that renders him independent of each of his fellow citizens, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to it's beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence." Alexis De Tocqueville

The common perception of decentralization is in fact the application of the "one best way" by a multitude of special interests. There is nothing whatever to the idea that decentralization debunks Ellul's work. Each of the individuals spoken of by Tocqueville applies the "one best way" to his or her own pursuit. The decentralization is in the ends, not the means.

The charge Ellul's assertions are unsupported misses the fact the assertions need no support other than an eye to see what is going on in the world all around us.

This book is one any educated person should be ashamed not to have read.


Extremely Prescient!   October 23, 1998
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

This book reads like it was written in 1998 but it was written in 1964! Basically all the current ills that humanity must endure with his technology are all elucidated decades before other supposedly astute "intellectuals" knew what was even going on! He uses the example of man using "technique" to show how we use technique in everything we do from education to politics and how over time technology shall overwhelm any attempts to control it and how a totalitarian state is all but inevitable. Extremely well written and researched. It really should be cited by more authors and read more widely. I would definitely recomend this book to anyone who wishes to learn more about the technological society in which they live.