ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the term totalitarianism can be meaningfully employed in a new direction. It draws on the writings of Lewis Mumford, an erudite and prodigious historian of technology. The chapter then considers contemporary commentators on technology, before utilising post-structuralist thought to illustrate the impending danger of a new socio-cultural totalitarianism. To understand the ontological basis for the abiding conflict between democratic and authoritarian technics it is necessary to examine Mumford's analysis of the megamachine. In his The Technological Society Jacques Ellul offers an analysis of the development of technology that although different from Mumford also supports and reinforces Mumford's depiction of a dominant scientific-technological rationality. In his recent text, Surveillance Society, David Lyon argues that surveillance societies are not totalitarian by nature. The distinction between surveillance society and surveillance state in Lyon is vitally important, and is reflective of classical accounts of political totalitarianism.
