On Volume 120 of the Journal, I talked with theologian Jonathan Wilson about his book, God’s Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation (BakerAcademic, 2013). Early in the book, Wilson refers to Jacques Ellul’s prescient and seminal book, The Technological Society, published in French in 1954, and released in English in 1964. Wilson contrasts two ways of knowing Creation. We can approach Creation, says Jonathan Wilson, from the standpoint of wisdom, or from the standpoint of techne. Wilson uses the Greek word to highlight, as did Ellul, the fact that the spirit of modern technology isn’t just an assembly of gadgets and devices, but something more like a principality or power. This techne, writes Wilson, “seduces us into thinking that it is something we can control and by which we can also control our world. Techne, in Ellul’s prophetic unveiling, is a false god that drains life from us by weaving a lie about the world and life. Techne, by virtue of its practical atheism, requires that humans master their world. There is no God to trust with that which we cannot understand, or, understanding, that which we cannot control or predict. And so we are driven to eradicate mystery, and by doing so we embrace a withered portrayal of life.”
Here are several of the opening paragraphs in Ellul’s book:
“Whenever we see the word technology or technique, we automatically think of machines. Indeed, we commonly think of our world as a world of machines. This notion . . . arises from the fact that the machine is the most obvious, massive, and impressive example of technique, and historically the first. What is called the history of technique usually amounts to no more than a history of the machine; this very formulation is an example of the habit of intellectuals of regarding forms of the present as identical with those of the past.
“Technique certainly began with the machine. It is quite true that all the rest developed out of mechanics; it is quite true also that without the machine the world of technique would not exist. But to explain the situation in this way does not at all legitimatize it. It is a mistake to continue with this confusion of terms, the more so because it leads to the idea that, because the machine is at the origin and center of the technical problem, one is dealing with the whole problem when one deals with the machine. And that is a greater mistake still. Technique has now become almost completely independent of the machine, which has lagged far behind its offspring.
“It must be emphasized that, at present, technique is applied outside industrial life. The growth of its power today has no relation to the growing use of the machine. The balance seems rather to have shifted to the other side. It is the machine which is now entirely dependent upon technique, and the machine represents only a small part of technique. If we were to characterize the relations between technique and the machine today, we could say not only that the machine is the result of a certain technique, but also that its social and economic applications are made possible by other technical advances. The machine is now not even the most important aspect of technique (though it is perhaps the most spectacular); technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his productive activity.
“From another point of view, however, the machine is deeply symptomatic: it represents the ideal toward which technique strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique; it is pure technique, one might say. For, wherever a technical factor exists, it results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.…
“Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational events. Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges, without the anguish of being delivered up to the inhuman. Technique thus provides a model; it specifies attitudes that are valid once and for all. The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society.
“As long as technique was represented exclusively by the machine, it was possible to speak of ‘man and the machine.’ The machine remained an external object, and man (though significantly influenced by it in his professional, private, and psychic life) remained nonetheless independent. He was in a position to assert himself apart from the machine; he was able to adopt a position with respect to it.
“But when technique enters into every area of life, including the human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance. It is no longer face to face with man but is integrated with him, and it progressively absorbs him. In this respect, technique is radically different from the machine. This transformation, so obvious in modern society, is the result of the fact that technique has become autonomous.”
— From Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (Alfred A. Knopf, 1964). This work was originally published in French as La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle in 1954.
Related reading and listening
- Paradoxical attitudes toward plastic — Jeffrey Meikle traces the technological, economic, and cultural development of plastic and relates it to the American value of authenticity. (15 minutes)
- Technology and the kingdom of God — FROM VOL. 63 Albert Borgmann (1937–2023) believes Christians have an obligation to discuss and discern the kind of world that technology creates and encourages. (12 minutes)
- The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
- Diverting language from its richest possibilities — FROM VOL. 75 Steve Talbott discusses the rich capacities of language and how technology diminishes them. (18 minutes)
- The recovery of true authority for societal flourishing — Michael Hanby addresses a confusion at the heart of our current cultural crisis: a conflation of the concepts of authority and power. (52 minutes)
- Automation and human agency — FROM VOL. 150 Philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford laments the losses of human skill that correspond with gains in mechanical automation. (21 minutes)
- A fearful darkness in mind, heart, and spirit — Roberta Bayer draws on the work of George Parkin Grant (1918–1988) to argue that our “culture of death” must be countered with an understanding of reality based in love, redemptive suffering, and a recognition of limitations to individual control. (33 minutes)
- Questioning “conservatives” — John Lukacs asserts that believers in unending technological ‘progress’ can’t really be conservatives.
- Seeking control, in white magic and The Green Book — Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis’s critique of the modern pursuit of god-like control
- Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity — In a 2003 interview, Leon Kass discussed his book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. The unifying theme in the book’s essays is the threat of dehumanization in one form or another. (36 minutes)
- The surrender of culture to technology — FROM VOL. 6Neal Postman discuses the ways in which how we think about the world has been influenced by communications technology, even in its earliest forms. (11 minutes)
- A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
- Technology and social imaginaries — In this interview from 1999, cultural historian David Nye insists that societies have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
- Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
- Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)
- Embedded values and dreams — Felicia Wu Song on why our technologies are not neutral tools
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
- Art as aestheticism, love as eroticism, politics as totalitarianism — Augusto Del Noce on the “technological mindset” and the loss of the sense of transcendence
- We are not Cybermen — Essayist L. M. Sacasas discusses some of the ideas of Ivan Illich, whose work has influenced Sacasas’s own understanding of the anti-human dynamics of technological society. (21 minutes)
- What happens when the Machine stops? — David E. Nye provides a context for evaluating the prospect of life in the Metaverse
- America (not the Church) as the New Creation — David E. Nye on one of the founding myths of America
- Technological choices become culture — David E. Nye insists that societies do have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established both politically and economically, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
- Loss of significance — Steve Talbott on how technology alienates us from the world
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 151 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Richard Stivers, Holly Ordway, Robin Phillips, Scott Newstok, Junius Johnson, and Peter Mercer-Taylor
- Technology as magic — Richard Stivers describes how the hyperrationality of technological societies drives many people to lives guided by instinct, emotion, superstition, and fantasy. Also included in this Feature is an interview with David Gill, who summarizes some of the key ideas in the work of Jacques Ellul, a major influence in the writings of Stivers. (24 minutes)
- All how, no why — Langdon Winner summarizes a key theme in Jacques Ellul’s writing about technology
- Not in tune with the world — Michael Hanby on how the “technological paradigm” flattens our thinking
- What is at stake for us in a self-driving future? — Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
- Wise use of educational technologies — David I. Smith articulates the difficulties Christian schools face as they seek to use technology in a faithful way. (24 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 150 — FEATURED GUESTS:
David I. Smith, Eric O. Jacobsen, Matthew Crawford, Andrew Davison, Joseph E. Davis, and Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 148 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Steven D. Smith, Willem Vanderburg, Jeffrey Bilbro, Emma Mason, Alison Milbank, and Timothy Larsen
- How should we then teach? — Following three years of research, David I. Smith discusses what he and his colleagues learned about how educational technologies can be profitable servants and not tyrannical masters. (56 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS:
R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
- Lessons from quarantine: Making do with tinned fruit — In this audio reprint of “Wendell Berry and Zoom,” Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro reflects on two metaphors that can help put our new-found “dependency” on web-based video conferencing into perspective: tinned fruit and a prosthetic limb. (17 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 141 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Grant Wythoff, Susanna Lee, Gerald R. Mcdermott, Carlos Eire, Kelly Kapic, and James Matthew Wilson
- The priority of paying attention — Maggie Jackson talks about the increased relevance of her 2008 book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (15 minutes)
- Science, technology, and the redefinition of the human — In a lecture presented in Washington in 2018, philosopher Michael Hanby argues that the meaning of the human is being radically redefined in our modern “biotechnocracy.” (57 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 130 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Jacob Silverman, Carson Holloway, Joseph Atkinson, Greg Peters, Antonio López, and Julian Johnson
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 129 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Nicholas Carr, Robert Pogue Harrison, R. J. Snell, Norman Wirzba, Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski, and Peter Phillips
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 116 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stratford Caldecott, Fred Bahnson, Eric O. Jacobsen, J. Budziszewski, Brian Brock, and Allen Verhey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 113 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven Shapin, Arthur Boers, Christine Pohl, Norman Wirzba, Craig Bartholomew, and David I. Smith
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 111 — FEATURED GUESTS: Siva Vaidhyanathan, John Fea, Ross Douthat, Ian Ker, Larry Woiwode, and Dana Gioia
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 105 — FEATURED GUESTS: Julian Young, Perry L. Glanzer, Kendra Creasy Dean, Brian Brock, Nicholas Carr, and Alan Jacobs
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 100 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 96 — FEATURED GUESTS: David A. Smith, Kiku Adatto, Elvin T. Lim, David Naugle, Richard Stivers, and John Betz
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 94 — FEATURED GUESTS: Maggie Jackson, Mark Bauerlein, Tim Clydesdale, Andy Crouch, and Jeremy Begbie
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 89 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jerome Wakefield, Christopher Lane, Dan Blazer, Fred Turner, Barrett Fisher, and Thomas Hibbs
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 88 — FEATURED GUESTS: Diana Pavlov Glyer, Michael J. Lewis, Steve Talbott, Darryl Tippens, Everett Ferguson, Alexander Lingas, and Calvin Stapert
- Better things for better living — Richard DeGrandpre: “When a thousand points of light shine upon you in a commercial war for your thoughts, feelings, and wants, your mind adapts, accepts, and then, to feel stimulated, needs more.”
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 81 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nigel Cameron, Joel James Shuman, Brian Volck, Russell Hittinger, Mark Noll, and Stephen Miller
