The technological society : [a penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man

In what many consider to be Ellul's most important work, The Technological Society (1964), Ellul set forth seven characteristics of modern technology that make efficiency a necessity: rationality, artificiality, automatism of technical choice, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy. The rationality of technique enforces logical and mechanical organization through division of labor, the setting of production standards, etc. And it creates an artificial system which "eliminates or subordinates the natural world." Regarding technology, instead of it being subservient to humanity, "human beings have to adapt to it, and accept total change." As an example, Ellul offered the diminished value of the humanities to a technological society. As people begin to question the value of learning ancient languages and history, they question those things which, on the surface, do little to advance their financial and technical state. According to Ellul, this misplaced emphasis is one of the problems with modern education, as it produces a situation in which immense stress is placed on information in our schools. The focus in those schools is to prepare young people to enter the world of information, to be able to work with computers but knowing only their reasoning, their language, their combinations, and the connections between them. This movement is invading the whole intellectual domain and also that of conscience. "..He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process." -Harper's Magazine As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology-which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind-threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process."-Harper's "One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself-unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs."-The Nation "A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance."-Los Angeles Free Press Monograph on historical and contemporary social implications of technology in civilization - discusses economic implications of technology and its relationship to the institutional framework, political doctrines, education, leisure activities and quality of life, etc., as well as its philosophical and sociological aspects, and makes future predictions. Bibliography pp. 437 to 449 ...he Goes Through One Human Activity After Another And Shows How It Has Been Technicized, Rendered Efficient, And Diminished In The Process.- Harper's Magazine

...he Goes Through One Human Activeity After Another And Shows How It Has Been Technicized, Rendered Efficient, And Diminished In The Process. --harper's Magazine

"A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man."--Cover Techniques The Characterology of Technique Technique and Economy Technique and the State Human Techniques A Look at the Future No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world.