The Six Characteristics of the Technological World according to Jacques Ellul.

Since our spontaneous relationship to artificial intelligence is, from the outset, technical in nature, any analysis of its ethical and societal implications should first proceed through a global characterization of the technical phenomenon itself. The etymology of the term already informs us about the phenomenon. The word “technique” derives from the noun technè, meaning “skill” or “know-how,” which gave rise in Latin to ars, the origin of the French word “art.” The meaning we attribute to the latter today did not exist in Antiquity. It was only in the eighteenth century that the category of “fine arts” emerged, and that the term “art” came to designate a specific type of activity—precisely called “artistic activity”—and objects whose purpose would be aesthetic and disinterested, as opposed to technical objects and activities primarily oriented toward utility and efficiency.

From their origin, the terms “technique” and “art,” which were then synonymous, were associated with the idea of practical competence, or of a capacity to produce and accomplish something by appropriate means, through the implementation of a method acquired through experience. It is in this sense that one speaks of the technè of the baker, the potter, the carpenter, but also of the technè of the surgeon, the painter, the sculptor, or even the technè of the rhetorician, a specialist in rhetoric.

If the definition of technique as a noun may vary depending on contexts and authors, it always contains, as fundamental semantic features: first, the idea of know-how acquired through practice; second, the use of means implemented with a given end in view; third, explicit rules and methods, most often transmitted through apprenticeship; fourth, efficiency, notably through performance gains that may take very diverse forms such as increased labor productivity, improved means of communication, energy optimization, reduced travel time, or the reliability of a medical diagnosis.

In its adjectival form, the term “technical” is most often associated with that of “object” (technical object) or “system” (technical system), in order to designate artifacts (from the Latin arte factum, “made by human hands”), that is, devices produced by human activity, as opposed to what belongs to nature, which has undergone no transformation by human hands (today one speaks of “anthropization”) and exists independently of any human intervention. Examples include the cultivation of land (agriculture), the extraction of raw materials (industry), or the construction of a hydraulic dam. It is within this framework that certain thinkers of technology have attempted to propose classifications of the different types of technical objects, intended to account for their specificities, their modes of operation, their degree of complexity, autonomy, functional sophistication, or even their evolution.

Thus one distinguishes between the terms “tools,” “instruments,” “devices,” “utensils,” “machines,” “robots,” or even “artificial intelligence systems,” which has the merit of drawing attention to the diversity of the technical phenomenon. These different categories, relatively classical in the philosophy of technology, establish a classification according to a criterion of sophistication or technicality, implicitly conveying a progressive conception of the history of technology. In other words, the notions of “technique” and “progress,” at least in our so-called “modern” societies, appear closely linked, if not inseparable. Technique thus appears as the principal driver of the evolution of human societies, insofar as it is a factor of growth, efficiency, increased life expectancy, comfort, and well-being. It constitutes the most important social, human, and spiritual fact of our modernity.

Yet, while all human activities, whatever their level of complexity (from flint tools to artificial intelligence), share a common characteristic—namely, implementing a set of means or methods in order to achieve a result—today’s hyper-technical civilization is above all characterized by the concern “to seek in all things the absolutely most efficient method” (the one best way). Such is the thesis of an author unfortunately little known to the general public, Jacques Ellul (1912–1994), who nevertheless proposed one of the most relevant and systematic analyses of the technological world as it began to emerge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What, indeed, asks Ellul in a work published in 1954, The Technological Society, are the essential characteristics of modern technique of which we would still be contemporaries? He thus proposed an ideal type of the technological world through the analysis of six essential characteristics that remain strikingly relevant today: automatism of technical choice; self-augmentation; unity (or inseparability); the necessary linkage of techniques; technical universalism; autonomy of technique.

Automatism of technical choice. - “The one best way.” According to Ellul, this is the first distinctive trait of modern technique: the possibility of subjecting any activity to calculation, measurement, and a rigorously determined method, whose purpose is the attainment of the most efficient result possible. Technological thinking is thus defined by its exclusive orientation toward performance and by the constant search for optimal realization according to criteria of efficiency (for example, in the context of a surgical operation). Within such a framework, human freedom of choice is immediately set aside, since the decision no longer results from subjective arbitration but imposes itself mechanically simply because one method appears objectively more effective than another. Consequently, it is no longer the human being who remains the agent of choice, but technique itself.

It is precisely this phenomenon that Ellul designates by the term “automatism of technical choice”: the process by which our technical orientations determine themselves automatically, without human intervention playing a decisive role. The freedom that seems to accompany these choices is, in reality, illusory. Do we truly have the leisure to choose between several technical options, once the criterion of efficiency acts as a constraining norm, indisputable and universally recognized? Ellul answers without ambiguity: “Let it not be said that man is the agent of technical progress (…) and that he chooses among possible techniques. In reality, no: he is a recording apparatus of effects, of the results obtained by various techniques (…). He decides only in favor of what yields the maximum efficiency.”

In a world entirely structured by technique and technological thinking, technical progress can therefore no longer be called into question. Technical activity, by virtue of its automatism, tends on the one hand to eliminate any uncertain or imprecise activity that does not fit within its framework, and on the other hand to transform, whenever possible, a non-technical activity into a technical one. In other words, technological thinking establishes a hierarchy between technical and non-technical activities, and, correlatively, between technicians and non-technicians. As Ellul summarizes: “Today each man can have a place to live only if he is a technician.” Self-augmentation. - The second characteristic of the modern technological world is what Ellul calls “self-augmentation.” By this expression, Ellul refers to the idea that technique, as an environment into which human beings literally “sink” continuously—according to his own wording—evolves and develops by itself, without decisive human intervention being necessary. Technique thus proceeds in the manner of “a process without a subject,” to borrow the formula of the philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1990), determined exclusively by efficient causes (that which mechanically produces effects), from which any form of finality is excluded. It thereby acquires a relative autonomy, with its own dynamic and its internal rules of expansion, progression, and growth.

Technical modernity therefore breaks with the model of “dazzling” discoveries and inventions characteristic of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, embodied by exceptional figures such as Galileo (1564–1642) or Newton (1643–1727), and replaces it with a model of scientific and technical progress founded on “tiny improvements that accumulate indefinitely until they form a mass of new conditions” making possible, at a certain stage of development, a decisive leap. Thus, “it is no longer the man of genius who discovers something; it is no longer Newton’s dazzling vision that is decisive; it is precisely this anonymous addition of the conditions for the leap forward.” Ellul illustrates this phenomenon through the field of pedagogical techniques: the innovations introduced by Decroly and Montessori did not in themselves constitute isolated ruptures, but were extended, refined, and perfected by thousands of practitioners, whose feedback and the gradual accumulation of methods collectively produced genuine transformations.

The central notion of “self-augmentation” also implies the idea of technique generating itself. A given technical invention inevitably gives rise to the appearance of other inventions. Thus, the invention of the internal combustion engine, for example, conditioned the rise of many other inventions and new industries such as the automobile, aviation, navigation, the mechanization of agriculture, the development of the petroleum industry, or the elaboration of new techniques of labor organization and the automation of production lines through the Taylorist-Fordist model. From this principle of technical self-augmentation, Ellul derives two fundamental laws of technical evolution that account for the internal and cumulative dynamic specific to the technical phenomenon:

• Technical progress is unlimited: In theory, there is no limit to technical progress. It should be recalled that Ellul understands “technique” here as a global phenomenon, and not as a particular technique. While a given singular invention may quickly fall into obsolescence, the technical process as a whole knows no assignable end. In other words, continuous obsolescence is not an anomaly but a fundamental component of the mode of operation specific to the technological world

• Technique progresses geometrically: Technical progress does not unfold linearly, but according to a geometric progression marked by constant acceleration. This second law implies two central ideas: first, a technical discovery produces multiple repercussions and leads to advances in several other branches of the technical universe, as illustrated by the example of the internal combustion engine; second, techniques tend to combine in order to form unprecedented ensembles. Ellul cites the example of propaganda techniques that he himself studied, which result from the combination of communication techniques, techniques related to the study of psychological phenomena, techniques of authoritarian government, as well as commercial and marketing techniques.

Unity (or inseparability). - The third fundamental characteristic of the technical phenomenon is what Ellul calls its “unity” or “inseparability.” This trait may be grasped through two essential propositions: first, technique forms a whole that is rigorously autonomous with respect to other spheres of human activity and evolves according to laws that are its own, independently of the particular forms it takes—whether it be a computer, an electric motor, the organization of labor in a factory, techniques of commercialization or propaganda, or the construction of an aircraft; second, technique constitutes an inseparable ensemble from which it is impossible to isolate certain elements or to submit them to selective choice. This becomes particularly evident when one invokes the alleged neutrality of technique and seeks to distinguish it from its uses: “The great tendency of all those who think about techniques is to distinguish: to distinguish between the various elements of technique, some of which could be preserved, others set aside; to distinguish between technique and the use made of it. These distinctions are rigorously false and prove that nothing has been understood about the technical phenomenon, all of whose parts are ontologically linked and whose use is inseparable from its being.” From this follow three fundamental implications.

• Technique imposes its own rules and uses: Technique is not a simple means available for an indeterminate use; it is designed for a specific application, which alone determines its effectiveness. Consequently, speaking of the “misuse” of a given technique lacks relevance, since such use is no longer technical. Every technique imposes its own rules, and human beings ultimately have only two exclusive alternatives: to use it in accordance with those rules, or not to use it at all. In other words, the notions of “good” and “bad,” when endowed with a moral connotation, are entirely inoperative in the evaluation of a technical system, since the latter has strictly nothing to do with morality: “(…) there is rigorously no difference between technique and its use. (…) man is placed before an exclusive choice, to use technique as it must be used according to technical rules, or not to use it at all; but it is impossible to use it otherwise than according to technical rules.”

• It is illusory to believe that technique can be directed: The unity of the technical phenomenon lies not only in the ontological link between a technique and its use, but also in the impossibility of separating its positive and negative aspects. It is therefore illusory, according to Ellul, to believe that one could preserve the beneficial aspects of technique while eliminating its negative aspects: “Could one have discovered atomic engines and atomic energy without creating the bomb?” Nuclear energy perfectly illustrates this principle: it is simultaneously a source of progress and of catastrophic risks. We are thus placed before a dilemma that compels us to choose between two alternatives, neither of which is entirely satisfactory: to accept together the positive and negative aspects of technique, or to refuse technical progress: “(…) technique in itself (and not through the use made of it nor through non-necessary consequences) leads to a certain number of sufferings, of scourges, that cannot in any way be separated from it.” In other words, it is futile to hope either to direct the uses of technique or to direct technique itself; their ambivalence is constitutive of the technical phenomenon.

• One cannot foresee all the consequences of technique: Finally, the intrinsic ambivalence of the technical phenomenon lies in its unpredictability. Ellul observes that “man can never foresee the totality of the consequences of a technical action,” and that everything a technique makes possible will sooner or later be realized. It is therefore only after the fact, and at the end of a determined period of experimentation, that a technique learns to correct the side effects that could not initially be anticipated. Should one conclude that technical progress ultimately allows negative effects to be eradicated or minimized so that only positive effects remain? No, replies Ellul, for every technical advance always generates, in turn and inevitably, unforeseen consequences that may be harmful, thereby inscribing technical evolution within an endless cycle of innovations and counter-effects, inseparable from one another.

  
  

The necessary linkage of techniques. - The fourth characteristic of the technical phenomenon is what Ellul calls “the necessary linkage of techniques.” By this he refers to the process through which each invention or advance, arising from prior techniques, necessarily exerts a driving effect on the emergence of other techniques, which make the former more efficient but in turn generate new techniques, eventually forming a global system whose elements support and engender one another. What matters here is to grasp the impersonal character of the factors that contribute to creating, maintaining, and enriching the technical system as a whole, which proceeds less from the conscious will of individuals than from the internal logic of the technical phenomenon itself. The linkage described by Ellul takes the form of a dynamic process that is at once necessary, impersonal, automatic, and cumulative.

• Necessary first, since every technical progress or invention is required to participate in the functioning and refinement of other techniques, whose existence it conditions.

• Impersonal next, since the advent of technical progress depends less on human intention than on the causal force inherent in a prior technical invention.

• Automatic, because each technical advance mechanically brings forth new problems and new needs that other innovations will have to address. Thus, no technique is ever isolated but connected to others that it helps either to maintain or to generate.

• Cumulative, finally, since the mechanism of technical linkage produces a kind of snowball effect in which each innovation calls forth another. This mechanism contributes to the growing complexity of the technical system and to the strengthening of the interdependence of its elements. As a result, a modification in one sector of the technical system inevitably produces more or less significant repercussions in other components of the same system.

Ellul illustrates the mechanism of technical linkage with the example of the textile industry, known to be one of the cradles of the first industrial revolution. For the first time, the loom was associated with the steam engine, giving birth to the first mechanical loom in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was precisely the addition of a new source of energy—coal, exploited through the steam engine perfected by James Watt in 1784—to technical innovations in spinning and weaving that made possible the appearance of the mechanical loom by Cartwright in 1789, and with it the advent of mechanization. From that point onward, a chain of innovations and the development of new machines occurred in an almost mechanical manner, producing major changes in other sectors of labor and production, such as metallurgy.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new world gradually took shape with the creation of an unprecedented space of production—the factory—and the combination of several coordinated machines specialized in distinct tasks. These transformations contributed to the growing complexity of production processes, which in turn called for the invention and implementation of new techniques of production and labor organization, notably techniques of the division of labor.

The increasing mechanization and the corresponding growth in production volumes, which now had to be distributed across an expanded market, in turn led to the development of unprecedented commercial, logistical, and administrative techniques: the expansion of sales methods; the organization of goods transportation and the calculation of railway routes and timetables; the establishment of insurance and credit techniques; the refinement of accounting practices; the creation of the joint-stock company and the legal mechanisms necessary to finance ever larger industrial organizations.

At the same time, new techniques of steam navigation developed, transforming maritime and river transport, contributing to the expansion of international trade and to the growing integration of markets. Rural exodus, combined with the rise of large industrial metropolises, finally brought about the emergence of techniques of urbanization and city planning that completed and extended the technical system as a whole.

Technical universalism. - The fifth characteristic of the technical phenomenon is what Ellul calls “technical universalism.” The expression first refers to the progressive geographical expansion that technique, in the modern sense of the term, has undergone, becoming global and now affecting all countries. In other words, the technical phenomenon no longer recognizes borders and imposes itself everywhere, regardless of the economic situation or the level of civilizational development of the societies concerned.

This universalism of technique is not merely spatial or geographical; it is also cultural and civilizational. Everywhere the same technical objects and uses tend to prevail; the same models of production; the same methods of labor organization and management; the same modes of communication and information; the same forms of leisure and consumption. In other words, all spheres of human life—production, health, education, work, exchange, leisure, communication—are now governed by the same logic of rationality, efficiency, and performance.

Ellul thus points to a form of westernization and generalized homogenization of ways of life, which marginalizes, and even contributes to the disappearance of, the historical diversity of local traditions and cultural practices. These do not withstand the logic of technological thinking: “There is no doubt that all cultures and all traditional sociological structures will be destroyed by technique before we have been able to find the social, economic, and psychological forms of adaptation that might have preserved the balance of these societies and these human beings. (…) Thus, in every domain, technique brings about the collapse of other civilizations.”

This universalizing tendency confers upon technique a totalitarian character. It penetrates even the most personal aspects of human life: techniques of relaxation, hygiene, aesthetic care, family organization, interpersonal communication, or active listening. Wherever it unfolds, technique, understood as a set of means, procedures, and methods, thereby imposes a triple requirement.

• Of uniformization, since it reduces all thought and action to the sole criteria of rationality, utility, efficiency, and performance.

• Of adaptation, since it compels institutions, organizations, and individuals to conform to the rule of performance under penalty of marginalization.

• Of neutralization of critique, finally, since it immediately invalidates any form of thought not aligned with instrumental rationality, which demands the systematic choice of the best means in order to achieve the best possible result.

By becoming universal, technique has thus become the unsurpassable framework of a modernity entirely subjected to its rules, to the point that all values, norms, and collective representations have in some way reorganized themselves around it, so much so that it now constitutes the universal and common language of humanity as a whole.

Autonomy of technique. - Sixth and final characteristic of the technical phenomenon: its autonomy. The etymology of the term sheds light on what Ellul means by the expression “autonomy of technique.” The word autonomy indeed derives from the Greek autonomos, formed from autos (self) and nomos (law). It designates the capacity of an entity to act independently—according to its own laws—without depending on an external authority. One immediately notices that the term can apply both to rational, conscious, and intentional agents (such as individuals or organizations) and to technical systems (machines, automated devices, robots). Thus, any machine or technical system whose operation is independent and does not require direct human intervention will be described as “autonomous.” In this context, “autonomous” approaches the meaning of “automatic.” Regardless of the diversity of entities to which the term may refer—and whose modes of existence must in no way be confused—the idea of independence from external intervention remains the fundamental semantic trait of the notion of autonomy.

For Ellul, the expression “autonomy of technique” designates a dual process of emancipation and autonomization through which technique has progressively freed itself from any consideration external to its own domain of action, in order to become entirely autonomous and independent. Two questions then arise: from what kind of emancipation does technique, in the modern sense of the term, proceed? And above all, to what kind of autonomy does the “autonomy of technique” refer? Whereas the first question is historical and interrogates the rupture between the “old regime of technique” and the “current regime of technique,” the second is conceptual: it invites us to characterize the present state of the technical phenomenon as an autonomous phenomenon. Yet it is by answering the second question that the first is illuminated indirectly. By characterizing the contemporary autonomy of technique, one can understand, by contrast, what it has detached itself from. Ellul thus identifies three major ruptures constitutive of the modern autonomy of technique.

• Autonomy with regard to politics. During the Enlightenment, science and technique were conceived as instruments of emancipation and improvement of the human condition. They were part of a broader project of economic and social transformation whose ultimate aim was to expand knowledge, improve living conditions, and foster prosperity through the development of commerce and industry. Within this framework, economic and social progress conditioned the evolution of technical progress. Modernity, however, breaks with this idea: it reverses the relation between technical progress and social change, since it is now technique “that conditions and provokes social, political, and economic progress.” Hence the historical autonomization of technique described by Jacques Ellul, insofar as technique is no longer subordinated to objectives external to its own domain—such as the improvement of living conditions—but becomes, as if through a ruse of history, that which conditions the quasi-blind development of all economic, social, and cultural evolutions. Freed from the relation of subordination it once maintained with political and economic spheres, which dictated from the outside its purposes and reasons for being, technique in the modern sense develops according to a deterministic logic constituted exclusively of internal and efficient causes. Consequently, political and economic spheres now find themselves subjected to the dictates of technical evolution, difficult to foresee, compelled after the fact to adapt reactively to the changes it imposes. This automatic, deterministic, autonomous, and seemingly uncontrollable character of technical evolution, which appears to escape any form of individual or collective will, is perfectly captured by the popular expression: “You can’t stop progress.”

• Autonomy with regard to morality. The second dimension of the emancipation of technique, correlated with the first, is its rupture with ethics and values. The question is no longer which values or ideals (social justice, collective well-being) technical progress should serve, but rather how to evaluate it strictly in terms of the gains in efficiency and performance it is capable of producing. In other words, technique is amoral, in the sense that it is impermeable to any normative system—particularly ethical ones—that would not conform to its own essence. Yet this essence is above all instrumental. As Ellul reminds us: “It can do everything. It is truly autonomous.” One should not, however, confuse the amoral character of technique with a supposed neutrality, for it is precisely this emancipation from values that transforms every technical system into a potential instrument that may be placed at the service of good or ill. But this beneficial or pernicious becoming is intrinsic to the very deployment of technique and independent of the will of agents. Each innovation thus contains within itself a set of positive and negative consequences that cannot be separated or fully anticipated, by virtue of the principle of “unity” previously outlined.

• Autonomy with regard to the human being. Finally, the third dimension of the autonomy of technique is characterized by its emancipation not only from politics or economics, morality, and values, but from the human being himself. This aspect, emphasized by Ellul, complements—and even intensifies—the self-augmenting character of technique, since not only does “man participate less and less actively in technical creation, which becomes a kind of fatality,” but he also tends to be displaced from the very process of technical functioning, replaced in many tasks by machines.

It should be recalled that Ellul wrote in the context of the 1950s, a period in which the share of industry in total production continued to grow, reaching approximately 40 percent by 1960. Within this context, he anticipated an almost complete replacement of the worker’s physical effort by machines in industrial production, with the worker’s role gradually reduced to functions of supervision and maintenance. Wherever there exist risks of inaccuracy linked to distraction or fatigue, risks of errors in judgment due to subjectivity, or risks of omission and imprecision inherent in repetitive or complex tasks, ever more sophisticated techniques, according to Ellul, will come to substitute themselves for human labor, thereby ensuring a mode of functioning that is both increasingly efficient and increasingly autonomous.