Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society: How Efficiency Becomes the Master
Imagine a world where every aspect of life is meticulously calculated, optimized, and streamlined. Where the relentless pursuit of “better” dictates our choices, shapes our values, and subtly reshapes our very humanity. Are we already living in that world? If so, how did we get here? And more importantly, how do we break free? These are the questions at the heart of Jacques Ellul’s seminal work, The Technological Society, a book that, decades after its publication, feels less like a historical analysis and more like a chilling prophecy unfolding before our eyes. It’s a book that forces us to confront a profound truth: We are not just using technology; we are being used by it.
The Rise of Technique: Beyond Mere Technology
The common fear is that of robots rising up, or machines taking over, but Ellul points to a far more subtle and insidious threat: the rise of “Technique.” This isn't simply about machines or gadgets. It's about the *principle* of efficiency becoming the dominant force in all human endeavors. Technique, in Ellul’s view, is the search for the "one best means" to achieve any given end. It is the relentless pursuit of the optimal, applied not just to industrial production, but to politics, education, medicine, even our personal relationships. Think about it: data driven decisions, algorithmic recommendations, metrics to measure everything from happiness to productivity. This is Technique at work.
But why is this a problem? Isn't efficiency a good thing? Isn't progress defined by doing things faster, better, and cheaper? Ellul argues that the problem lies not in the individual application of technique, but in its *universality* and its *autonomy*. Once efficiency becomes the overarching goal, everything else – human values, ethical considerations, even our fundamental humanity – gets subordinated. The ends justify the means, as long as the means are efficient. The more efficiently we solve problems, the more problems we create.
The Autonomous System: A Self-Reinforcing Cycle
The beauty – and the danger – of Technique is that it operates as a self-reinforcing system. Each technological advancement creates new opportunities for efficiency. These opportunities, in turn, drive further technological development. This cycle creates what Ellul calls an autonomous system, independent of human will and increasingly resistant to human control. It's like a runaway train, gathering momentum, with a destination we can no longer clearly see.
Consider the internet, a technology designed to connect us. But has it made us more connected or more isolated? Has it liberated us or enslaved us to the constant demands of information, the endless pursuit of likes and validation? Consider the subtle shifts: From local communities to global algorithms. From the simple pleasures to the data-driven metrics of our lives. The systems that Ellul described are now in full swing.
Ellul's vision, however, isn't one of a fully automated world. Instead, he describes a world where humans are increasingly adapted to the demands of Technique. We become optimized components within the very systems we build. We are trained to be efficient, to conform to the needs of the system, to prioritize measurable outcomes above all else.
The Subjugation of Humanity: The Cost of Efficiency
What are the consequences of living in a technological society dominated by Technique? Ellul argues that it leads to a profound loss of autonomy and a new form of enslavement. We become prisoners of the system, judged by our performance, and driven by external metrics. Our values are shaped by the demands of efficiency. Our creativity is channeled into pre-determined paths.
This isn't just about factories and assembly lines. It’s about the way we think, feel, and interact with the world. Consider these points:
The Erosion of Values: The relentless focus on efficiency undermines traditional values, ethical considerations, and human relationships.
The Loss of Meaning: Life becomes reduced to a series of tasks and data points, devoid of intrinsic meaning or purpose.
The Rise of Propaganda: Manipulation and control become integral to maintaining the system, as people must be persuaded to conform to the dictates of Technique.
The Dehumanization of Work: The drive for efficiency transforms human labor into a series of repetitive, meaningless actions.
Are we already seeing these trends in our own society? Do our lives feel increasingly dictated by external forces? Are we sacrificing our well-being, our values, and our relationships on the altar of efficiency?
Resisting the Machine: Finding Freedom in a Technological World
So, what can we do? Is there any way to resist the relentless march of Technique? Ellul doesn't offer easy answers, but he suggests a few key principles:
Critical Awareness: We must become critically aware of the ways in which Technique is shaping our lives. We need to recognize its influence and resist its demands.
Cultivating Inner Freedom: We must cultivate our inner lives, developing our own values, fostering our own creativity, and finding meaning beyond the dictates of efficiency.
Rejecting Technological Determinism: We must remember that technology is a tool, not a destiny. We have the power to choose how we use it and what values we prioritize.
This is not about becoming a Luddite or rejecting technology entirely. It's about developing a critical perspective, about reclaiming our autonomy, and about shaping technology to serve human values, rather than the other way around. Perhaps one of the most useful aspects of Ellul’s work is its ability to expose and reveal. Consider this video explaining how to break free from the attention economy:
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Conclusion: A Timeless Warning
Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society is a challenging, even disturbing book. But it's also a profoundly important one. It forces us to confront the hidden pressures of modern life, to question the assumptions that underlie our technological world, and to consider the cost of progress. It's a book that demands we ask ourselves: What are we optimizing for? What are we losing? And how do we reclaim our freedom?
“Technique has become a total phenomenon for modern civilization, which has taken the place of traditional values and has invaded every area of life.”
Ellul's warnings, once seen as pessimistic, now seem remarkably prescient. In a world dominated by algorithms, data analytics, and the relentless pursuit of optimization, his insights are more relevant than ever. Understanding Jacques Ellul is about understanding the true nature of the world we inhabit. The fight for freedom in the technological age is not a fight against machines; it is a fight for our humanity, for our values, and for our capacity to make choices, rather than be made by them. The challenge is clear: to use technology wisely, to question its demands, and to remember that we are, first and foremost, human beings. The masters of our own destiny.
Here's an aspect of it I'm about to post: Quantifying Experience and the Oura ring syndrome
I’ve been wearing an Oura ring for a few years now and realize it's changed much in my day to day experience- and the change isn't good.
Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, I’ve slowly developed an objective framework through which much of my experience now passes. It’s objective because it's about measurements rather than felt experience.
Since acquiring an Oura ring it's now not enough to have a good or bad night’s sleep. Oura wants me to know exactly how much REM and Deep Sleep I'm getting and the precise number of hours and minutes I was asleep. It then compares that to the number of hours I was in bed to determine my sleep efficiency. It also takes measurements of my heart rate during the night and HRV, heart rate variability.
The same thing happens when I walk in the Berkeley Hills along its narrow winding streets bordered by redwoods. It’s no longer enough to breathe in the fresh air, commingle with nature or sense my body moving through space. Instead, I’m paying too much attention to the number of steps I’m taking, how fast I’m taking them, my heart rate and the number of calories I’m burning.
To make matters worse I often compare Oura's numbers with those on the activity monitor of my Apple watch And I find it upsetting when the numbers don't match. It's as if the device with the lower number is cheating me.
Over the years I’ve eschewed social media knowing what an attention suck and waste of time it was. But here I am caught in the clutches of my Oura ring and the activity monitor of my Apple watch. Is that really much different than being captive to Facebook, TikTok or X. And though it's not quite the same as hanging on to every word of the biohacker Bryan Johnson or The Look Smaxxer it’s in the same neighborhood.
What's truly dispiriting about this is that the simple joy of being in nature doesn’t seem cut it any longer with the dopamine apparatus. It prefers the readout on my Oura ring, chasing the low hanging fruit, quantified experience.
I've also noticed that I'm not only taking these measurements for myself but to impress my friends. It sounds more arresting as an octogenarian to say I took 10,000 steps than I had a pleasant walk in the hills.
The humorist Gary Shteyngart has recently written a novel about this strange way of being. The book is called Super Sad True Love Story and it’s about a poor schlep who lives in a world in which all experience is subject to quantification. Shteyngart’s near-future America runs on what's called the äppärät, a pendant device everyone wears that streams data continuously and ranks people in real time. There are, for example, credit poles on the street that broadcast your financial worth as you pass. In Shteyngart's world the body is quantified with biomarkers and mortality odds that track your data like stock portfolios. And there are companies that provide dechronification, the undoing of time, and indefinite life extension for high net worth individuals.
We're not there yet, but it's coming our way. How soon will the surveillance state probe into our lives as we opt to quantify our experience. And image where that's going as AI vastly expands its capabilities. Of course, we'll be offered plenty of goodies to get on board, fascinating new data points, and it won't be so apparent to most of us what we're giving up.
What should be most worrying about this is the sleight-of-hand at play, the substitution of felt experience with quantitative experience. In my view, it’s skating very close to what some are calling techno-fascism. If our every data point is available to the state thanks to companies like Palantir how will it not be used by bad actors, like the present gang in Washington DC, to control our private lives.
Data collection has always been the infrastructure upon which authoritarianism rides. It doesn’t cause subjugation but subjugation at scale is impossible without it. Quantifying much of our experience hands the state a map of each individual where otherwise there’s only a blank.
Though classical fascism coerced through terror, spectacle, and visible violence, techno-fascism operates closer to what the French philosopher Michel Foucault described as the move from discipline to internalized self-surveillance. It’s also what another French philosopher Gilles Deleuze called the control society-power no longer needs a watcher once the subject has adopted quantification as the lens through which he understands himself.
This brings to mind something else. It's said that what George Orwell feared was those who would ban books, but what Aldous Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one.
There doesn’t need to be a Gestapo or Stasi only the quiet substitution of the felt sense of being for, “Oura says my readiness is 92.” This is vastly more efficient than terror because it is voluntary and engaging. The quantification of experience is corrosive precisely because it feels frictionless and fun. But it produces docile, self-optimizing subjects who experience their own subjection as self-improvement. It doesn’t need a boot.