From Technological Autonomy to Technological Bluff: Jacques Ellul and Our Technological Condition

Abstract The work of Jacques Ellul is useful in understanding and evaluating the implications of rapidly changing technologies for human values and democracy. Ellul developed three powerful theses about technology: technological autonomy, technological determinism, and technological bluff. In this essay, the authors explicate these views of technology, and place the work of Ellul in dialogue with the ides of other important theorists of technology (including Max Weber, Herbert Marcuse, Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner, and Hans Jonas). Ellul’s too-often overlooked theses about technology are relevant to our present technological society