), His was largely an interior disposition, yet he lived in an era that demanded action. 3. They consider technology to be predominantly beneficial, and therefore little government regulation or public policy choice is needed; consumers can influence technological development by expressing their preferences through the marketplace. Though he was ultimately theocentric (centered on God), and he talked about the redemption of the whole cosmos, many of his images are anthro-pocentric (centered on humanity) and imply that other forms of life are left behind in the spiritualization of humankind that technology will help to bring about. There were just effects and all technologies were disruptive. Material progress represents liberation from the tyranny of nature. Each element has a meaning or significance only within the ensemble. Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) French philosopher; Holds that technology is progressive and beneficial in many ways, it is also doubtful in many ways. 39. Here society is considered basically good and its positive potentialities are affirmed. But in 1954 Ellul saw the beast emerging in infant form. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business. Technique became universally totalitarian in modern society as rationalistic proceduralism imposed an artificial value system of measuring and organizing everything quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And a whole new arsenal of human techniquestherapy, pharmaceuticals, mass mediaemerges to help us adjust to our ever-increasing dislocation. P. Hans Sun, Notes on How to Begin to Think about Technology in a Theological Way, Theology and Technology, ed. It remains to be seen whether any distinctive legacy from Marxism will remain there after the economic and political turmoil of the early nineties. Taxing the Brain Drain - JSTOR 13. This is close to the definition given by Arnold Pacey in The Culture of Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), p. 6. Reactions at the conference to this disturbing argument varied. The large scale of many current systems is as much the product of government subsidies, tax and credit policies, and particular corporate interests as of any inherent economies of scale. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: The Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. x. Many engineers are trained in the physical sciences and interpret living things in mechanistic rather than ecological terms. Thomas Derr, Conversations about Ultimate Matters: Theological Motifs in WCC Studies in the Technological Future, International Review of Missions 66 (1977): 12334. By Vicki Robin, Fran Korten, Resilience.org, Fran Korten is former executive director, publisher and contributing editor for YES! 38. Affluent nations use a grossly disproportionate share of the world's energy and resources. These three chapters provide the ethical categories and principles for examining policy decisions about particular technologies in later chapters. Melvin Kranzberg, Technology the Liberator. in Technology at the Turning Point, ed. Ellul proposes a form of reflection based on dialectical tensions, thus opening the way to . Why? The technocrats claim that their judgments are value free; the technical elite is supposedly nonpolitical. In Memoriam: John D. Barrow. Fourth, large-scale technologies typical of industrial nations today are particularly problematic. This position has much in common with the Catholic view and shares its understanding that God is at work in history, society, and nature as well as in personal life and the church. Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. Ellul contends that this divinely assisted shift in perspective helps put science back in its proper place among human endeavors. Teilhard seldom acknowledged the tragic hold of social injustice on human life. When telephones were introduced, women were the switchboard operators and record keepers, while men designed and repaired the equipment and managed the whole system. 16. They are less concerned about economic growth than about how that growth is distributed and who receives the costs and the benefits. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit from Each Other, in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. (Ellul never set foot in the U.S., the country where he enjoyed his widest readership. Marxists assign justice a higher priority than freedom. Buckminster Fuller, The Critical Path (New York: St. Martins Press, 1981); Herman Kahn et al., The Next 200 Years (New York: William Morrow, 1976); Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Bantam, 1971) and The Third Wave (New York: William Morrow, 1980). Other contextualists have pointed to the role of technology in the subordination of women. Appraisals of modern technology diverge widely. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) and The Reactor and the Whale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). We have let technology define the good life in terms of production and consumption, and we have ended with mindless labor and mindless leisure. They would tend to side with our sec-and group, the critics of technology. He repeatedly takes Lewis Mumford to task for focusing narrowly on modern technology, which Ellul sees as merely a physical manifestation of the broader concept of technique. . Some critics assert that technology is not just a set of adaptable tools lot human use but an all-encompassing form of life, a pervauttuie with its own logic and dynamic. Contextualism is most common among our third group, those who see technology as an ambiguous instrument of social power. Read him. Either he remains what he was [prior to the disruptive technological development], in which case he becomes more and more unadapted, neurotic, and insufficient, loses his possibilities of subsistence, and is at last tossed on the social rubbish heap, whatever his talents may be; or he adapts himself to the new sociological organism, which becomes his world, and he becomes unable to live except in a mass society.
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