The Technological Society , Jacques Ellul

-About this book

As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. 
Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. 
« A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper’s 
“One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that ‘technique’ is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation
“A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press.

-Contents

Statement from the Publisher

Foreword

Translator’s Introduction

NOTE TO THE READER

FOREWORD TO THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION

CHAPTER I—Techniques

SITUATING THE TECHNICAL PHENOMENON

Machines and Technique

Science and Technique

Organization and Technique

Definitions

Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Primitive Technique

Greece

Rome

Christianity and Technique

The Sixteenth Century

The Industrial Revolution

CHAPTER II—The Characterology of Technique

TECHNIQUE IN CIVILIZATION

Traditional Techniques and Society

The New Characteristics

CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN TECHNIQUE

Automatism of Technical Choice

Self-augmentation

Monism

The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques

Technical Universalism

The Autonomy of Technique

CHAPTER III—Technique and Economy

THE BEST AND THE WORST

The Influence of Technique on the Economy

Economic Consequences

THE SECRET WAY

The Economic Techniques of Observation

The Economic Techniques of Action

Planning and Liberty

THE GREAT HOPES

Economic Systems Confronted by Technique

Progress

Centralized Economy

The Authoritarian Economy

The Antidemocratic Economy

ECONOMIC MAN

CHAPTER IV—Technique and the State

THE STATE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH TECHNIQUE

Ancient Techniques

New Techniques

Private and Public Techniques

The Reaction of the State to Techniques

REPERCUSSIONS ON THE STATE

Evolution

The Technical Organism

The Conflict Between the Politicians and the Technicians

Technique and Constitution

Technique and Political Doctrines

The Totalitarian State

SUMMUM JUS: SUMMA INJURIA

REPERCUSSION ON TECHNIQUE

Technique Unchecked

The Role of the State in the Development of Modern Techniques

Institutions in the Service of Technique

CHAPTER V—Human Techniques

NECESSITIES

Human Tension

Modification of the Milieu and Space

Modification of Time and Motion

The Creation of the Mass Society

Human Techniques

REVIEW

Educational Technique

The Technique of Work

Vocational Guidance

Propaganda

Amusement

Sport

Medicine

ECHOES

Techniques, Men, and Man

L’homme-machine

The Dissociation of Man

The Triumph of the Unconscious

Mass Man

TOTAL INTEGRATION

Technical Anesthesia

Integration of the Instincts and of the Spiritual

The Final Resolution

CHAPITRE VI :A Look at the Year 2000

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Caractéristiques

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006AXXY4

Langue ‏ : ‎ Anglais

NB.de pages ‏ : ‎ 449 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0394448030

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0394448039

Poids de l’article ‏ : ‎ 998 g