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“Technique encompasses the totality of present-day society,” wrote Ellul. “Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavour have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.”
Join Us • Jacques Ellul: A Prophet for Our Tech-Saturated Times | the Tyee
The peril to democracy under present conditions of information isn’t any of these things: it’s the spread of nihilism in the public and the demoralization of an elite class that has lost any claim to authority.
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The dominance of technique imposes centralism upon the economy (despite comparatively inconsequential efforts to decentralize individual industrial firms), for once technique develops beyond a given degree, there is no effective alternative to planning. But this inevitable process is impersonal. Only the naïve can really believe that the world-wide
... See moreJacques Ellul • The Technological Society
technology, religion,
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
theconvivialsociety.substack.com • The Limits of Optimization
The belief that human behaviour can be perfectly modelled, predicted and controlled entrains as a consequence the collapse of equitable relations between individuals and trust in institutions, and the substitution of algorithmic certainty for any semblance of participatory, democratic society. There is no appeal to collective, contestable
... See moreJames Bridle • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff Review – We Are the Pawns
every authoritative