Jacques Ellul on technique, media, and the spirit

Abstract

The French sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul was a critic of la technique—the rationalized, efficient method underlying contemporary technology. Ellul felt that la technique had produced an all‐embracing technological environment, which was self‐augmenting and threatened to become totalitarian. Against the world of la technique, Ellul dialectically posed a realm of truth, available through the spoken word. Ellul found the roots of the realm of truth in the spirit, which he felt promoted freedom.