• Technique ("the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources in order to achieve certain valued ends") is the milieu in which humans exist- it has replaced nature.
• It is artificial
• It is Autonomous
• It is self-determining
• It is characterized by growth, but is not goal directed
• Means have come to have precedence over ends
• Its parts are intrinsically interrelated an inseparable
• Development of individual techniques is an "ambivalent" phenomenon
• All social phenomena are situated within Technique
• It comprises organizational and psycho sociological techniques, so they can not determine or control it. Humans must (are being forced to) adapt to it(!)
• Modern human values, choice, and ideas are dominated by Technique. Our choices are already incorporated within the technological process.

False Problems

• We make too much of the problems of technology. It contains the solution. We benefit more from it than we would without it
• Morals are not being eroded. A new morality and ethical system are emerging.
• Aesthetics is not dead: new forms of expression are being created
• Human reality, values and powers are not being eliminated

Real Problems

Can humans (and which ones) remain the masters in a world of means: Who decides?

• People (seem) to exploit technology- yet technology is autonomous
• The human actor is more and more the object of techniques
• Is the end point of technical development the betterment of the human condition?
• Do we just passively participate in technological progress- is "appropriate technology" possible?
• For humans to remain "subject," we must center upon and accept common values and behavior towards Technique

Can a new civilization appear inclusive of technique?

• We live in a technical world of material objects: Technique's interest in "man" is as an object
• Technical growth=> growth in power- limitless and perhaps, uncontrollable. As power expands, Value declines. "When man is able to accomplish anything at all, there is no value that can be proposed to him"
• Technique can not produce Freedom (animal vs. Human needs)
• "New limits and technical oppression have taken the place of older, natural constraints..."
• And, we can't go back.

Traditional "Solutions"

The Problem Will Solve Itself

• Traditional Marxism
• Technocracy
• Economic models: Material development provides a basis for human expansion.

The Problem Demands a Modification of the Whole of Humanity

• Einstein: A "superstate" led by philosopher-scientists
• Others: A re-invention of spirituality

Intermediate: Teilhard de Chardin- "Spirit has contrived Technique as a means of organizing dispersed matter.." An end stage to the process of evolution- unification. "Conscious evolution"??

Ellul rejects all of these!

• He focuses on the need for the institutionalization of firmer forms of social and moral control
• Perhaps a better answer is found through the work of Langdon Winner, as expressed in Larry Hickman's "Autonomous Technology in Fiction": Rather than "Technique" in Ellul's sense. We need to distinguish
1. Technique as technology's "software"- skills, methods and routines
2. Technology's "apparatus"- technics, the "hardware"
3. Technology's "Organization"- The Rationalization of Human Affairs
• If these are related, yet distinctive elements, then the problems they propose require different responses from the human actor.

• Hard version:
1. Technology determines social existence
2. Marx: "In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production, and in changing their mode of production they change their way of living-they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist." (See note STS page 94)
3. Perhaps technological change determines the range of options, but social reality determines which options are actualized: cultural beliefs, values. Nuclear power or Solar, Assembly line or Quality Circles.
• Soft version:
1. Technological changes are the most important source of change: Catalyst, necessarily but not sufficient
2. Yet: significance of religious and political ideology and significant change
3. Twentieth Century as distinctive
4. Judgement call

See also, Technological or Media Determinism, by David Chandler. University of Wales-Aberystwyth

Alternatives to Technological Determinism: Agency, Myth, and Dereification.

Understanding of Technology as a Social Phenomenon: The Social Construction of Technology

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/280/tecdeterm.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 16:02