Overview

As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in France 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.

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9781799931751

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The Technological Society is 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 the 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 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 The effect is a contained intellectual explosion, a heated recognition of a tragic complication that has overtaken contemporary society. -- George Washington Law Review

Author Information

"Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was a French philosopher and Christian anarchist. He served for many years as professor of history and the sociology of institutions at the University of Bordeaux. Although he was trained as a sociologist, he is considered a philosopher with a particular interest in technology and the possibility of technological tyranny. He is said to have coined the phrase ""Think globally, act locally."" Among his books are Propaganda, The Political Illusion, The Theological Foundation of Law, The Meaning of the City, and many others. Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine ""Best Of"" Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed."

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