The Technological Society

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. (La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle, 1954). John Wilkinson, trans. New York: Knopf, 1964. Rev. American edn. New York: Knopf, 1967. Also, New York: Vintage, 1967.

Significant for its analysis of the replacement of "political man" by "the technician" (Preface vii in 1967 Knopf edn.). More significant for the analysis of contemporary industrial society which JE encapsulates in ch. 1: the machine is important because it "represents the ideal toward which technique strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique . . . ." Wherever "a technical factor exists, it results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms everything it touches into a machine" (4)—and ours is a "technological society." JE's more recent works include The Political Illusion (New York: Random, 1967), and Le Système technicien (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1977). See V. Lauber, "Efficiency and After," cited in this section.

RDE, Title, 10Aug19