Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness

Download or read book Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness written by David Lovekin and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-19 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the French thinker Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) and his historical, biblical, and social analyses of how technology manipulates and impoverishes modern thought, culture, and language. In the spirit of Georg Hegel and Ernst Cassirer, Ellul explores how technology begins in myths, stories, and religion, advances to tools, and then develops into data, algorithms, and abstract systems which are detached from human bodies and communities. Efficiency then becomes an absolute in all areas of human life, and the mentality of technique becomes lost in its creations. These modern symbols, posing as ultimate human goods and values, are denigrated by technique, leaving humanity awash in clichés, in groundless social media, and in blathering slogans that sustain the illusion that politics and culture have now become.