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By: Ares Marlonsson

Attention spans are decreasing while hours spent in front of screens are increasing, and humans are growing more dependent on technology every day. There is a growing problem in modern society that so many are seemingly oblivious to. One of the earliest to realize and critique humans growing enslavement to technology was Jacques Ellul. Long before the first iPhone was ever sold, he noticed that the society was giving up long-standing traditions in favor of a world where algorithms, propaganda, administrative systems, genetic modification and technology created a world of maximal productivity and order. He warned against were the sacrifices society and humans would have to make in order to achieve social efficiency.

Ellul excelled throughout his younger years in subjects such as Latin, French, German, History and obtained his doctorate from the University of Bordeaux in 1936.[1] He would later return to the university to teach history of law as well as social law from 1946 to 1980, after joining the French resistance during WWII and serving as the deputy mayor of Bordeaux for a brief stint. During his time teaching, the French historian, sociologist, and theologian argued that the term he coined “Technique,” includes not merely machines and other technical devices but the whole complex of rationally ordered methods for making any human activity more efficient. [2] Ellul would also argue that Technique has outgrown human control and even if we were able to govern the technology we produce, the complex as a whole has taken on a life of its own, and threatens human freedom while also suppressing any means to a solution. Jacques Ellul also believed that “the technology phenomenon has become detached from the machine,” and that “in the past, technology was