The Characteristics of the Technological World in the Pre-Modern Era according to Jacques Ellul.

As a preliminary note. - In another article on this blog, I presented the six characteristics of the technological world as masterfully theorized in one of the most important works of twentieth-century philosophy of technology: The Technological Society (Economica, 2008). The reading of Jacques Ellul (1912–1994), an author now largely underestimated, is in my view indispensable for anyone seeking to understand—borrowing an expression from another major thinker in the philosophy of technology, Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989)—the mode of existence of technical objects and systems in the contemporary era, and more particularly the mode of existence of artificial intelligence systems. The latter would moreover benefit from being described as socio-technical systems, in order to move beyond the illusion of neutrality that often surrounds them and to emphasize more strongly the social reconfigurations and transformations they inevitably produce.

To present more exhaustively the characteristics of the technological world as described by Jacques Ellul in the modern and contemporary periods, as well as its role in the transformation of societies, it would have been necessary to place it in relation to that from which it breaks, namely the pre-modern era. By highlighting the characteristics of the technological world as they existed prior to the advent of modernity, it becomes possible, by contrast, to illuminate the singularity and originality of the functioning of the technological world today.

The Technological Society was written in the early 1950s and first published in 1954, at a moment when France and Europe were gradually emerging from the post-war period and modernizing their systems of production and industry on the basis of methods of work organization and industrial production largely inherited from the Taylorist-Fordist model that had emerged in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Household equipment rates in France and Europe—automobiles, domestic appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, and so forth—would soon converge with those of the United States, while what was already called the consumer society was becoming generalized.

Although we were then only at the beginnings of the computing revolution, companies were already beginning, from the early 1950s onward, to glimpse the potential benefits that the use of computers might bring, even as these machines had not yet entirely left the world of laboratories and universities. It was in this context that the first manufacturers of electronic calculators (UNIVAC) and punched-card machines (IBM, Bull, BCR) emerged, and that the first commercial computers were marketed in 1951, such as the Ferranti Mk1, the UNIVAC I, and the first IBM computers. The objective was to reproduce, in the world of services and administration, what had already been achieved in industry through Frederick Winslow Taylor’s (1856–1915) scientific management and Henry Ford’s (1863–1947) production methods: improving the productivity of white-collar labor.

A few years earlier (1942), Asimov had presented his three laws of robotics—the first attempt to formalize fundamental ethical principles, already anticipating the well-known problem of alignment in AI ethics as it arises today; Vannevar Bush had published his famous article As We May Think (1945), in which he imagined a system, the Memex, serving as an extension of human memory, capable of storing vast volumes of information linked together according to a principle close to hypertext, the foundation of the contemporary Web; von Neumann had laid the foundations of modern computer architecture in a now-famous report, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC; while the 1950s saw the beginning of the replacement of vacuum tubes by the first transistors, initiating a process of component miniaturization and a simultaneous increase in computing power, accompanied by a continuous reduction in costs, heralding the widespread use of computing that would truly begin only with the microcomputing revolution of the 1980s. Only two years after the publication of The Technological Society (1954), the first volume of a trilogy later followed by The Technological System (1977) and The Technological Bluff (1988), the famous Dartmouth conference (1956) would take place, bringing together the main pioneers of artificial intelligence: Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001), Claude Shannon (1916–2001), Marvin Minsky (1927–1996), John McCarthy (1927–2011), and Nathaniel Rochester (1919–2001).

Best known for his work in the philosophy of technology, Jacques Ellul was also a professor of legal history. His philosophical reflections on the evolution of the characteristics of the technological world are therefore largely nourished by the readings of historians of his time—particularly historians of technology (one need only glance at the bibliography of The Technological Society)—and it is reasonable to assume that he was well aware of developments in computing at the time he was writing. A reading of his works shows that he very early grasped the fundamental role that computers and information systems would come to play in the transformation of the technological system and social organization. Ellul wrote, indeed, two years before the very invention of the term Artificial Intelligence, and in a certain sense anticipated contemporary debates concerning the possible advent of superintelligence:

“Statistics have been accurate since they have been carried out not by men but by punched-card machines. The machine today no longer serves merely for a few massive and crude tasks but for an entire set of subtle operations, and with the electronic brain it soon attains an intellectual power that man cannot possess.”

It would nevertheless be mistaken to read a work such as The Technological Society as a history of techniques. Nor does it aim to establish a detailed balance sheet of the positive and negative effects of various techniques on societies—indeed, such an undertaking, Ellul warns, would inevitably remain fragmentary and superficial given the colossal nature of the task—nor to deliver an ethical judgment concerning the benefits or harms of technical progress. Rather, it proposes a fundamental analysis of the technical phenomenon taken as a whole, independently of the types of technical objects that compose it. For Ellul, technique is the most important social, human, and spiritual fact of our modern world. It is in this sense that the diagnosis he offers remains, in my view, remarkably illuminating and has not aged.

Technique is nothing but means and sets of means. - According to Ellul, technique cannot be reduced to the machine or to the mechanization of productive activity. The latter constitutes only one modality of deployment of the technical phenomenon in the broad sense of the term, one of whose fundamental characteristics is precisely to embrace the totality of human activities and to subordinate them to an imperative of efficiency. In other words, our modernity is above all characterized by the universality of the technical phenomenon, embodied in a multiplicity of activities and methods whose common point is the search for the most appropriate means relative to given ends. One may thus define technique in general as a set of means, and contemporary civilization (Ellul writes in 1954, yet his analyses remain largely relevant today) as a civilization of means that has relegated ends to the background. All human activities, whatever their level of complexity—Ellul cites as examples both the splitting of a flint and the development of an electronic brain—share, as fundamental common characteristics, the implementation of a set of means or methods in order to achieve a certain result.

Within this minimal definition—technique as a set of means—Ellul distinguishes the technical operation, defined as “any work carried out with a certain method” by a technical operator with the aim of achieving a result (whether the prehistoric hunter of the Paleolithic era or the skilled worker of today), from the technical phenomenon understood as the concern “to seek in all things the absolutely most efficient method” (“the one best way”). It is this second point that, according to Ellul, characterizes above all contemporary technological civilization, made possible notably by the historical convergence that has taken place between scientific activity on the one hand and technical activity on the other, such that “almost no disinterested research can any longer take place.” And Ellul adds: “Of course, it is not a question of minimizing scientific activity, but simply of noting that, in present historical reality, it is overshadowed by technical activity. Thus one no longer conceives science without its technical outcome.”

Once these premises are established, it becomes possible to call “technical progress” the use of ever more refined technical operations and methods, made possible by advances achieved, particularly since the industrial revolution, in the field of science, such that the two phenomena are now intimately correlated. In this sense, the nineteenth century constitutes, for our theme, a decisive turning point according to Ellul. Drawing heavily on the analyses of Lewis Mumford, author of Technics and Civilization, Ellul emphasizes that scientific work and research would henceforth be deliberately oriented toward technical applications, preparing another decisive fact in the history of the relationship between science and technique, namely no longer a simple rapprochement but a relation of subordination of science to technique that takes shape in the twentieth century. In other words, the principles of “utility” and “interest” now orient the work of researchers, such that science no longer has any other raison d’être than to lead to concrete applications serving, above all, the economic and material development of human beings. We are thus at the opposite extreme, recalls the author of The Technological System, of the almost total separation between science and technique in ancient Greek civilization, which nevertheless opened the path to rational and scientific thought (philosophy), but in an exclusively disinterested and speculative (contemplative) sense, that is, without practical or utilitarian aims.

Over the last two centuries, we have thus witnessed a kind of progressive hyper-rationalization of all human and social activities in the form of a new rationality called “instrumental,” which systematically seeks the most efficient means to achieve a given end without questioning the value or legitimacy of that end. In other words, instrumental rationality and the technological civilization it engenders are driven exclusively by a logic of operational efficiency consisting in the methodically organized search for the best means in every domain (“the one best way”). “This is the clearest face of reason under its technical aspect,” writes Ellul.

The characteristic phenomenon of our modernity, according to the author, therefore consists in the extension of the technological and calculative paradigm, embodied in the figure of the specialist, to all domains of human activity, “from the act of shaving” to the organization of a sporting event such as the Olympic Games, or even the military invasion of a country (these examples are mine). Ellul goes so far as to propose three major sectors of action of modern technique: first, economic technique, the sphere of technical procedures applied to production, distribution, and consumption (machine tools, automation of production lines, statistical models, optimization of logistics flows, and so forth); second, the technique of organization, or technique of the state, the sphere of application of techniques within the organization of work in companies, administrations, the state, the army, or society in general (division of labor, Taylorism, Fordism, human resources management, management techniques, and so forth); and finally, the technique of the human being, encompassing all techniques aimed at modifying, shaping, controlling, and influencing the human being on physical, psychological, and social levels (advertising, marketing, propaganda, surgery, genetics, pedagogical techniques, and so forth). Although Ellul devotes extensive analyses to these three domains in Chapters III (economic technique), IV (technique of organization), and V (technique of the human being), it would be mistaken to consider them separately, since they constitute interconnected branches and extensions of the technological world that mutually reinforce one another. In other words, they form a system.

Characteristics of technique in societies prior to the eighteenth century. - Now that we possess a definition and an overall vision of the technical phenomenon as it emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ellul seeks to construct its ideal type, both as it manifested itself up to the eighteenth century and, by contrast, as it manifests itself in the modern and contemporary era. In other words, what are the essential characteristics of modern technique, of which we would still be contemporaries, as opposed to the traditional techniques of the pre-eighteenth-century world? More precisely still, since it is necessary here to determine what must be characterized: what are the characteristics of the relationship between technique, society, and the individual, yesterday and today? The six characteristics of traditional techniques that Ellul identifies serve primarily to highlight the unprecedented and original situation that defines technique in the modern sense. These six characteristics are as follows.

• Technique applied only to limited domains: Societies prior to the eighteenth century accorded far less importance to technique than modern societies do. Religious considerations occupied a predominant place. Activities related to production or consumption (clothing, housing, and so forth) were of much lesser significance, and work did not play the central role it does today, since the aim was to work as little as possible, even at the cost of limiting consumption. Consequently, the time devoted to the use of techniques was small compared to other activities such as sleep, informal conversation, games, or meditation. For us moderns, by contrast, it seems impossible to imagine our comfort and existence outside an order structured by work and technique.

• Technical means were limited: To the limitation of the domains of application of technique was added the limitation of the technical means employed to achieve a result, such that the skill of the worker or artisan compensated for the shortcomings of the tools at his disposal. In other words, civilizations prior to the eighteenth century were more oriented toward the refinement of usage (skill, know-how) than toward the improvement of tools themselves.

• The technical phenomenon was always local: A third characteristic of the technological world prior to the eighteenth century was its local character. It was a world preceding globalization and the development of modern communication systems, in which social groups lived largely in isolation. Consequently, techniques did not yet circulate as anonymous commodities exchangeable on a market, but rather functioned as cultural markers specific to a given civilization, which could in fact constitute a barrier to exchange. Moreover, the diversity of techniques, varying from place to place, was not subject to comparative evaluation systems (what we now call “benchmarking”). They therefore did not give rise to competitive dynamics. This point is crucial, for it allows Ellul to highlight one of the fundamental aspects of the contemporary technical phenomenon, namely the search for the most efficient method or means (“the one best way in the world”). The world of yesterday, by contrast, was characterized only by the “best way” within a given country.

• Techniques evolved very slowly: The fourth characteristic of the pre-modern technological world is the slowness of its evolution. This can be explained by the nature of research at the time, which was primarily empirical and pragmatic, lacking a genuine theoretical and scientific foundation. Moreover, systems of transmission were slow, weak, and localized. It was only in the eighteenth century that a convergence between science and technique began to occur, along with a significant development of the means necessary to implement inventions that had previously been difficult to manufacture and disseminate rapidly throughout society.

• This evolution was disordered and diversified: The slowness of technical evolution was accompanied by a great diversity of models for a single technical object (weapons, tools, instruments, and so forth). In other words, technical development depended entirely on individual initiatives and lacked any framework capable of organizing both research and production (standardization). This diversified, artisanal mode of fabrication partly explains the slow pace of technical progress. Moreover, economic or political considerations were always intertwined with ethical concerns, such that technique was never considered for its own sake. According to Ellul, it is precisely the elimination of these factors of diversification and evolution that “led to a transformation of the process of this evolution. Technical progress is now conditioned solely by calculation and efficiency. Research is no longer individual, experimental, or artisanal, but abstract, mathematical, and industrial.”

• Different possibilities of choice: From the five characteristics of the technical phenomenon already described, typical of pre-modern civilizations prior to the eighteenth century, follows a sixth: the possibility of choice left to individuals according to the human group to which they belonged. Two major types of civilizations coexisted at that time, according to Ellul, which he calls, drawing on a distinction already well known in his era, “active civilization” and “passive civilization.” The former were characteristic of human groups oriented toward the exploitation of land, expansion, and conquest, and were therefore more subject to the influence of technique, while the latter, by contrast, were inward-looking and worked primarily toward the satisfaction of their fundamental needs without any desire for material expansion. Within this framework, individuals could withdraw from the influence of technique and live in a form of relative independence from it.

The six characteristics of techniques as they existed in civilizations prior to the eighteenth century would disappear entirely with the first phase of industrialization, which began in England and inaugurated what most historians now call the first industrial revolution. In our so-called “modern” civilization, by contrast with the old world, technique is no longer limited by anything: it extends to all domains and encompasses the entirety of our activities; it produces an infinity of ever more perfected means; it is global; it evolves at a bewildering pace; and it has ultimately led to a form of unity and homogenization among civilizations.

Yet, according to Ellul, the disappearance of these six characteristics is not sufficient to characterize the technical world as it exists today, as if defining modernity consisted merely in negating earlier traits. In other words, the modern world possesses characteristics that are entirely its own. It has given rise to a wholly unprecedented form of relations linking human beings and society to the technological world. These characteristics are also six in number and are all logically connected in order to describe a unique phenomenon, the technical phenomenon: automatism of technical choice; self-augmentation; unity (or inseparability); the necessary linkage of techniques; technical universalism; autonomy of technique. It is these six characteristics that I analyze in another article on this blog: The Six Characteristics of the Technological World according to Jacques Ellul.