“He was a very stern thinker, and a very chilling thinker,” says Langdon Winner, a professor of the humanities and social sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It’s not his fault it isn’t a pretty picture. His followers will tell you that neither of these things mean he wasn’t right if nothing else, they say, Ellul provides one of the clearest existing analyses of what we’re up against. It doesn’t help that he refused to offer ready-made solutions for the problems he identified. In an era of rampant technological enthusiasm, this is not a popular message, which is one reason Ellul isn’t well known. That force is turning the world around us into something cold and mechanical, and-whether we realize it or not-transforming human beings along with it. In truth, Ellul contended, technology should be seen as a unified entity, an overwhelming force that has already escaped our control. His central argument is that we’re mistaken in thinking of technology as simply a bunch of different machines. Ellul, who died in 1994, was the author of a series of books on the philosophy of technology, beginning with “The Technological Society,” published in France in 1954 and in English a decade later.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |