Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society Overview

A few of my favorite thoughts from Ellul's underappreciated work.

       

There is perhaps no book that I revisit more than Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society. Ellul very bravely takes on the endeavor to create a new pair of truth revealing glasses which reveal how technique shapes and guides every aspect of our modern technological society. The book is dense, to say the least. While only 436 pages, Ellul makes it feel like well over a thousand, and very often the academic style language makes it a bit of a bore to read but it is something we have to overlook because what he has to say is genuinely important, perhaps one of the last important texts to come from an academic . After all, If I wanted something funny to ready I’d read a self-important politician’s memoir.  While he covers way more than I can include in a readable article, Ellul’s basics are actually very digestible and intuitively understood.

            Central to Ellul’s philosophy is the concept of technique. Technique is a synonym of sorts for technology but he want to make very clear that technique is not the same as the machine. While the machine is certainly the most obvious manifestation of technique, it is only but one part of it. Technique may have arisen from the machine but is better conceptualized as a force. In Ellul’s conceptualization, technique replaces Plato’s Form of the Good or Aristotle’s happiness. That is to say, all things are done in order to realize ultimate efficiency. The assets, tools, and communications that lead to efficiency can be thought of as technique. Consider this, when the machine first came around, its integration into society did not happen by itself. In mostly agricultural societies the factory was largely inefficient. In order to integrate the machine into 19th century society the entire landscape had to be changed. Dense housing had to be built built near the factories for workers to live in, government had to subsidize the great cost of the factory, and city infrastructure had to be changed to include great abominations like public transport which treat men as parcels being transported to their wage cage like the amazon shipments they send off. This entire infrastructure can be called technique. This isn’t a Marxist critique as some might be quick to say. He make sure to say that in both capitalism and communism technique is almost the same with few cosmetic differences, but both seek the ultimate proficiency of production.

            Once you understand technique as a concept, you can begin to apply it as an explanation for much of the world’s faults and indeed Ellul does just that throughout the book. Technique has overtaken the sciences, academia, the state, and most importantly it has totally consumed man. You see, the issue with technique is that if it CAN be applied, then it MUST be applied, when efficiency is the ultimate good it makes no sense to not apply technique. Consider the increasing popularity of body augmentation. For what reason do we need to implement key cards under the skin? Well there really isn’t any, except that it will save seconds and perhaps you’d never lose it again, but that is reason enough in the technological society. Increasingly we see nerds moaning about connecting their brain to the internet. Have you ever really wanted that? Of course not, but your employer might like it, think of all the time and money it could save, the same reasoning is given for self-driving cars. Ellul reminds us that human beings will always be necessary in some manner but through augmentation their humanity can be removed and they’ll only need to be relegated to their lowest nature and not their individuality. A middle-ages serf was given more respect than most humans are today, for them their individuality meant something, a black smith couldn’t easily be replaced, neither could a baker or a farmer. It took years of apprenticeship to acquire the skills they needed but it was an inefficient system. Instead it would be better if any 16 year could do nearly any job with a few weeks of training. The removal of autonomy and choice in this way is a key to modern technique. As Ellul puts it “A surgical operation which was formerly not feasible but can now be performed is not an object of choice. It simply is. Here we see the prime aspect of technical atomization.”

            But beyond the denigration of man, Ellul spends a significant part of the book focusing on technique and its relationship between the economy and state. In respect to the economy, technique is the ultimate driver of change, not profit. While profit is important it is often thrown to the side when new technique is introduced into the system. As Ellul notes, often companies do things for the sake of efficiency that have little financial reasoning, like buying new machinery. In fact the cost to introduce the new technique is so high and irrational that private enterprise requires the state to make the cost rational. I imagine tesla sales would be much lower had the state not subsidized part of the cost.

We take on the cost and humiliation of techniques because we’ve been sold an ideology of progress. In its action in the economy, technique gives rise to great hopes within man; hopes of putting riches into the hands of every man, not gold or silver, but conveniences and comforts. Comforts like staying warm in the winter, drinking chilled beverages in the summer, and accessing endless nourishment. This myth of paradise is why Ellul believes that that the average man plays along with the economy of technique despite most knowing deep down that they’ve been duped. Some are quick to say that obviously this promise has been fulfilled, life is much better than the 1800s. Ellul replies to this by pointing out that only in short time periods is this true. Your 9 hour work day is in fact more comfortable than the 15 hour work day of 1850s miner but the comparison ceases to be so simple when we take into consideration the 15 hour work day of the medieval artisan. “We know that the peasant interrupts his workday with innumerable pauses. He chooses his own tempo and rhythm. He converses and cracks jokes with every passer-by.” On societal scales these differences in work cultures changes the overall economic milieu which makes it difficult to say that life has improved compared to 1250.

But let’s go back to the state, his 4th chapter, which covers this, was by far the greatest chore to read.­­ Due to the expansive and comprehensive nature of technique, some entity with great authorities has to assist it to make the most of it. It’s no good being able to make highways when you can’t tear down a pensioner’s house in the process. Furthermore, technique needs an entity which is capable of adapting man to the technical society. However, since technique consumes everything it eventually becomes so that the politician and technician come into conflict. Today we often notice politicians losing battles to so called “experts” despite nobody voting for them. Because in the minds of most people nothing should interrupt the progression of technique which is the one supposed apolitical virtuous endeavor. If a politician gets involved and questions the ethics or morality of a technique and is called nosey and is told “not to politicize science”. The task of the expert has become to furnish the politician with information and decisions, relegating the politician to merely a middle man for the technician. Ultimately then, systems of government become little more than cosmetic variables with barely different methods of fulfilling technique. This is really all one needs to know about states.

Finally, the part that I took most to heart was his chapter on educational technique. I’m sure many of you already know all this but it is worth going over. He recalls his memory of “dismal schools where teachers were enemies and punishment was a constant menace; of narrow barred windows, gloomy brown walls, and uncomfortable benches hollowed out by generations of bored students.” While fundamentally nothing has really changed, progressive education has changed the optics of the classroom. At its end, modern schools have the “happiness” of the child. A modern classroom is covered in colors and pictures of animals, but this is just a new face on the same education. technicians quickly found out that people can be better changed with shame than punishment. Sure the teacher doesn’t beat their students with a yard stick anymore but that is only because putting him in timeout and forcing him to apologize is more effective in creating a human who can one day sit in an office for several hours being humiliated with no complaints.

Ellul goes more in depth about education but I do wish he would carry this idea into the workforce. Employers have created techniques to hide the abuse of their employees. Just as the teacher doesn’t spank his students anymore the manager no longer yells at his employee or micro manages him. Instead he buys you clearance donuts and asks you how your sex life is; “how was your weekend? Did you have a nice fuck?” But ultimately both are motivations to for you to give as much labor as you can per hour of work time, and take an email or two when you go home as well. You really don’t want to let your nice manager who cares so much about your sex life down. At the very least the abusive factory owner is honest.

Overall Ellul’s book is brilliant. Most of us recognize that something about our society feels particularly unnatural. Ellul brings a few of these things to our attention. His concept of technique is a powerful tool to deconstruct the world. I do think he is ignoring some metaphysical aspects of life which hurt his view that everything is technique driven. If you’re able to tolerate 400ish pages of academic sociology I would recommend reading this. If you aren’t able to do so I would take away from this that the forces of technique have as their goal the subversion of all inefficiency. The issue with that is that inefficiency is what it means to be human. There’s nothing efficient about families, walks in the park, beautiful buildings, nice paintings, and even religion. But they are among the most important things in life. The unknowing worship of technique by those who supposedly cherish these fine things will be spiritual suicide.