The Technological Society

By Jacques Ellul.

-Recommended by Traversing Tradition-

Ellul saw clearly what many Muslim scholars saw in the beginning of the industrial era — the technocratic rationality of the oncoming technological society. All of social life, from the most private details to the most public would be determined by “technique”, the radical efficiency orientation of the modern era. Everything from government to even romance, friendship, ethics, and self-identity would all be dominated by this ethic of “technique” and rationalization. This book offers a window into the discomfort we feel when we see, for example, the modern mental health industry with its slogans to be “valid” or a politics defined by media-driven sentiments unknowingly imbibed as somehow inherent to the subject. Ellul’s critique only brings out what many before him saw already happening in the rationalization of society towards efficiency as an end, and technocratic rationality as defining the substance of that telos.

by Aqil Azme and Faizan Malik.