The technological bluff
M. Ellul's view of technology is that once it is let out of the laboratory, technology cannot be turned off. Technology begets more technology. The modern world, therefore, is one in which more technology is inevitable. Fixing or remediating the impact of a technology like water pollution requires--you guessed it--more technology
xvi, 418 pages ; 24 cm
9780802836786, 080283678X
21908719
Preliminary thesis: The great innovation
1. Multiple progress
2. Social discourse
3. The great innovation
Excursus on Simon, The ultimate resource
4. The aristocrats
Part I. Uncertainty
I. Ambivalence
1. All technical progress has its price
2. Technical progress raises more and greater problems than it solves
3. The harmful effects of technical progress are inseparable from its beneficial effects
4. Technical progress has a great number of unforeseen effects
5. Our lack of awareness
II. Unpredictability
1. Introduction to unpredictability
2. Our failure to foresee and relative unpredictability
3. Conditions that make forecasting impossible
4. Absolute unpredictability
5. Foresight
III. Double feedback
1. Positive feedback
2. Negative feedback
IV. Internal contradictions
1. Thresholds of reversal
2. Fragility
3. Compensations
Part II. Discourse
V. Humanism
VI. Is there a technical culture?
1. Imperatives and hesitations
2. What can we call culture?
3. A technical culture is impossible
VII. Human mastery over techniques
VIII. Rationality
IX. A sketch of the ideologies of science
1. Classical ideology
2. The new ideology
Excursus on science and faith
X. Experts
Part III. The triumph of the absurd
XI. Technical progress and the philosophy of the absurd
1. Technical absurdity
2. Economic absurdity
3. Human absurdity
4. Conclusion
XII. Unreason
1. Dissociation
2. Paradigms
3. The main areas of unreason
4. Complementary examples
XIII. The costs: The new relation between technique and political economy
XIV. What use?: The world of gadgets
1. Needs
2. The world of gadgets
XV. Waste
1. Private waste
2. Social and collective waste
3. Responsibility
XVI. The bluff of productivity
1. The state and science
2. Productivity
3. Entropy
Part IV. Fascinated people
XVII. From information to telematics
1. Information
2. Television
3. Telematics
XVIII. Advertising
XIX. Diversions
1. Games
2. Sports
3. The automobile
4. Mechanistic art
5. Ultimate idiocies
XX. Terrorism in the velvet glove of technology
Last words:
1. Inventing humanity
2. The great design
Translation of: Le bluff technologique
Translation of Le bluff technologique