The Technological Society

by Jacques Ellul

And here we enter into another area, the nature of the technician. In this decisive evolution, the human being does not play a part. Technical elements combine among themselves, and they do so more and more spontaneously. In the future, man will apparently be confined to the role of a recording device; he will note the effects of techniques upon one another, and register the results. A whole new kind of spontaneous action is taking place here, and we know neither its laws nor its ends. In this sense it is possible to speak of the “reality” of technique—with its own substance, its own particular mode of being, and a life independent of our power of decision. The evolution of techniques then becomes exclusively causal; it loses all finality. This is what economists such as Alfred Sauvy mean when they say that “by a slow reversal…production is more and more determined by the wishes of individuals in their capacity as producers, than by their decisions as consumers.” In reality, it is not the “wishes” of the “producers” which control, but the technical necessity of production which forces itself on the consumers. Anything and everything which technique is able to produce is produced and accepted by the consumer. The belief that the human producer is still master of production is a dangerous illusion.