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Academy of Ideas

Why Technology is Enslaving and Dehumanizing Us

Academy of Ideas

Academy of Ideas

Self-improvement, Education

4.8633 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society In the mid-1950s the French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote a book titled The Technological Society. In sit he proposed that technology, or more broadly what […]

The post Why Technology is Enslaving and Dehumanizing Us first appeared on Academy of Ideas.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:07.5

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0:13.7

Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor

0:19.6

have become mere entries and techniques

0:22.2

filing cabinet.

0:24.5

In the mid-1950s, the French philosopher Jacques Aulul wrote a book titled The Technological

0:29.9

Society.

0:31.0

In it he proposed that technology, or more broadly what he called technique, was enslaving

0:36.7

mankind. In this video, we explore this technique, was enslaving mankind.

0:38.0

In this video we explore this fascinating yet terrifying thesis.

0:42.8

The number of technical slaves, Alal wrote, is growing rapidly and the ideal of all governments

0:49.2

is to push as fast as possible toward technical enslavement.

0:54.0

A technological society is one that is dominated by what a lull called technique.

0:59.0

Technique is a method of action or a means for achieving ends that prioritizes efficiency above all else.

1:07.0

Technique, in other words, searches for the one best way to solve a problem or accomplish a task,

1:12.6

and in its search for optimal solutions it disregards broader moral, aesthetic, spiritual and cultural considerations.

1:20.1

Or as a lull explains,

1:21.7

Technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at in having absolute efficiency for a given stage of development

1:28.9

in every field of human activity.

1:32.1

Ballul believed that technique had become the dominant ordering principle of society, and he

1:37.3

identified several subdivisions of technique.

1:40.3

Firstly, there is the machine.

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