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Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

Moral of the story.

Don't dress twins alike.

Have you heard about the esp powers of identical twins also being an avenue of *scientific* research.

Part of the mind/ machine interface horrors.

(Only someone's conjecture.)

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Stegiel's avatar

https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/

In order to avoid misunderstanding it may be useful to mention again what I mean by “Technique” – often wrongly called “Technology” (cf. La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle [1954], Le Système technicien [1977]). What is called Technique can be assimilated neither to the machine nor to a collection of machines, methods and products. No longer a secondary factor integrated into a nontechnical society and civilisation, Technique has become the dominant factor in the Western world, so that the best name for our society is the “technicist society”1. It is on technique that all other factors depend. Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. The latter is totally dominated and utilized (in Western society). Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. Technique is the complex and complete milieu in which human beings must live, and in relation to which they must define themselves. It is a universal mediator, producing a generalised mediation, totalizing and aspiring to totality. The concrete example of this is the city. The city is the place where technique excludes all forms of natural reality. Apart from the city, the only choices left are either the urbanization of rural areas, or “desertification” (nature then being submitted to a technical exploitation controlled by a very small number of people). This emphasizes again that technique is really the Milieu in which modern humanity is placed. This technical milieu involves, on the human side, a complete re-examination of ancient modes of behavior, or physiological capacities (cf. G. Friedman, Sept études sur l’homme et la technique) 2. On the other side, technique constitutes a system in the strict sense of the term (cf. Bertalanffy), that is to say, an ensemble in which factors are so closely linked together that:

Each element has a meaning or significance only within the ensemble.

Any modification of an element has repercussions on the ensemble and modifies it. Any modification of the ensemble likewise modifies the elements of their relationships.

Privileged, almost exclusive relationships exist among the elements of the system, regardless of what is situated outside the system.

tech_detail4It is thus necessary to consider technique as an ensemble. The characteristics of the technical phenomenon are Autonomy, Unity, Universality, Totalization. Technique obeys a specific rationality. The characteristics of technical progress are self-augmentation, automization, absence of limits, casual progression, a tendency toward acceleration, disparity, and ambivalence. Nevertheless, technique is lacking in one of the essential characteristics found in any organized ensemble, reaction. It is not yet able to control its errors and dysfunctions, to react on its source and modify itself. However, we may now be in the presence of the progressive elaboration of such a reactive capability. The ethical problem, that is human behavior, can only be considered in relation to this system, not in relation to some particular technical object or other. Learning how to use “rightly” or “do good” with such and such a technique does not much matter, since each technique can only be interpreted within the ensemble. If technique is a milieu and a system, the ethical problem can only be posed in terms of this global operation. Behavior and particular choices no longer have much significance. What is required is thus a global change in our habits or values, the rediscovery of either an existential ethics or a new ontology.

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