Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul was a French sociologist, historian of institutions and Protestant lay theologian who taught for most of his career at the University of Bordeaux. In The Technological Society (1954) he argued that technique, the totality of methods rationally arrived at and aiming at absolute efficiency, had become an autonomous force in modern life, following its own logic and reshaping human ends to fit it. His work on propaganda and technology influenced later critics of technological society.

Key ideas

• Technique is not just machinery but the drive for the most efficient method in every field of activity.
• Modern technique has become autonomous: it develops by its own logic, largely beyond human choice or moral control.
• Technical progress brings costs that are inseparable from its benefits and often unforeseeable.
• Propaganda is a structural feature of technological mass societies, not only a tool of particular regimes.

Major works

• La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle (The Technological Society, 1954; English 1964)
• Propagandes (Propaganda, 1962)
• Le système technicien (The Technological System, 1977)
• Le bluff technologique (The Technological Bluff, 1988)

In the conversation

• Debate “It’s just a tool” is false: instrumentalism cannot survive the smartphone Rowena Abellana · 5 replies
• Discussion Automated cranes at the port, and Ellul’s idea that efficiency decides for us Hugo Marchetti · 5 replies