ABSTRACT
This chapter develops our discussion of technological determinism by examining in detail the work of Jacques Ellul, particularly his central concept of la téchnique. Ellul’s La Téchnique ou l’Enjeu du Siecle (literally ‘Technique: the stake of the century’, translated as The Technological Society) occupies the cusp between two technological epochs – the Industrial and Information Revolutions (Ellul 1963 [1954]: 88-9). More specifically, commentators have located Ellul’s reading of technology within a constellation of texts written around the Second World War that highlight the increasing predominance of technology in all spheres of life: Feenberg’s essentialists. These works include Mumford’s Technics and Civilization (1934), Veblen’s The Engineers and the Price System (1963 [1921]), Geidion’s Mechanization Takes Command (1969 [1948]), Spengler’s Man and Technics (1940), Jaspers’ Man in the Modern Age (1978 [1932]) and the various critiques of ‘instrumental rationality’ undertaken by members and associates of the Frankfurt School. Ellul provides a sustained exploration of the previously encountered essentialist notion that a fundamental change has occurred in society’s relationship to its technological infrastructure.
