Choosing our technologies

For Ellul, technique is not the machine: it is the ensemble of rational methods that seek, in every field, the maximal efficiency available, a logic that takes over the economy, administration, propaganda and the human being itself. It has become autonomous: it expands of itself, through the automatic choice of the most efficient means, and political, economic and moral institutions tend to conform to its demands, which reduces their capacity for control. He rejects the idea of a neutral technology in which everything would depend on use: its good and bad effects are inseparable. He does not preach the destruction of machines: he asks that we desacralize technology, the condition of a freedom that remains possible.

The Technological Society (1954) · The Technological System (1977) · The Technological Bluff (1988)

Jonas starts from an observation: human action has changed its nature. Its effects are cumulative, irreversible, planetary, and modern technology has become an endless enterprise that pushes the Baconian ideal of mastery to the point where it threatens. He rejects its neutrality without preaching any return to the past. His answer is methodological: a heuristics of fear, in which the evil we can imagine teaches us about the good to preserve, and a decision rule that gives the prophecy of doom priority over the prophecy of bliss whenever the very existence of humanity is at stake. A clearly critical value, short of the extreme of refusal.

The Imperative of Responsibility, preface, ch. I-II · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. V (the Baconian ideal)