The Technological System

Year 1977
Type Book
Genre cultural criticism
Tradition Reformed
Original language French

For For readers who know The Technological Society and want Ellul's fuller account of technique as a system; demanding, and not a first book.

Should I read this?

For the general reader: 2 of 5 worth a look
For the researcher: 5 of 5 essential
Difficulty: 5 of 5 very hard

The second of his three books on technique, describing it as a self-augmenting system. Demanding, and central for scholars.

How it proceeds

Philosophic 5 of 5
Scriptural 0 of 5
Experiential 0 of 5
Sociological 5 of 5
Historical 2 of 5

Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.

Published by Calmann-Lévy in 1977, this is the second of Ellul's three major books on technique, between La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle (1954) and Le Bluff technologique (1988). Ellul argues that technique has become a system: an environment of its own, with its own characteristics of autonomy, unity, universality and self-augmentation, in which the computer plays a unifying part. He examines how the system grows, how it lacks any capacity to correct itself, and what is left for human freedom within it. It was translated by Joachim Neugroschel as The Technological System (Continuum, 1980) and again by Lisa Richmond (2018).

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Catalog IDW.ZK7F92.C

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