We ought to understand freedom as having two dimensions: freedom from and freedom for. Too often we fail to consider that freedom is fully realized only when it is conceived not only as a freedom from restraint, but also as a freedom to fulfill a deeper calling toward which freedom itself is but a penultimate means. The two are related but not identical. What Ellul would have us see is that the modern technological order tends to promise the former while simultaneously eroding the latter.

To one interviewer he said, “I would say two things to explain the tenor of my writings. I would say, along with Marx, that as long as men believe that things will resolve themselves, they will do nothing on their own. But when the situation appears to be absolutely deadlocked and tragic, then men will try and do something.” (As odd as it may seem to some contemporary American readers, it could be said that Marx and Jesus where the two pillars of Ellul’s thought.)

The complete technological milieu has a total effect that is greater than its constituent parts, just as the total effect of a work of fiction cannot be properly assessed merely by tabulating literary devices and figures of speech. And these effects include shifting assumptions, new habits and dispositions, the dissolving and reconstitution of the plausibility structures sustaining political values, the redrawing of the horizons of expectation and desire, restructurings of the social order, the reshaping of our imagination, and a reorientation of our experience of the world. None of which will be apparent from a social history of the refrigerator, however interesting such a tale might be.

Returning once more to Ellul, later in a 1983 article about ethics and technology, he also recognized the problem which still plagues us but that few seem to acknowledge: those who call for ethical technology presume that human beings “must create a good use for technique or impose ends on it, but [are] always neglecting to specify which human beings.”“Is the ‘who’ not important?” Ellul asked.

“It seems impossible to speak of a technical humanism,” Ellul concluded after some further discussion of the matter. It was more likely, in his view, that human beings would simply be forced to adapt to the shape of the technological system. “The whole stock of ideologies, feelings, principles, beliefs, etc. that people continue to carry around and which are derived from traditional situations,” these Ellul believed would only be conceived as unfortunate idiosyncrasies to be eliminated so that the techno-economic system may operate ever more efficiently. “It is necessary (and this is the ethical choice!) to liquidate all such holdovers,” he continued sarcastically, “and to lead humanity to a perfect operational adaptation that will bring about the greatest possible benefit from the technique. Adaptation becomes a moral criterion.”

This humanizing of technology presumes the existing techno-social status quo and ultimately serves its interests. It only amounts to a recalibration of the person so that they may fit all the more seamlessly into the operations of the existing techno-economic order of things. That techno-economic order is itself rarely questioned; it is taken mostly for granted, the myth of inevitability covering a multitude of sins.

This humanizing of technology presumes the existing techno-social status quo and ultimately serves its interests. It only amounts to a recalibration of the person so that they may fit all the more seamlessly into the operations of the existing techno-economic order of things. That techno-economic order is itself rarely questioned; it is taken mostly for granted, the myth of inevitability covering a multitude of sins.

In Ellul’s terms, the answer to problems generated by technique is the application of ever more sophisticated and invasive techniques. The more general technological milieu is never challenged, and there’s very little by way of a robust account of what human flourishing might look like independent of the present technological milieu. 

I fully recognize that I may very well be guilty of a common disorder: thinking that what the world really needs more of is the very thing about which I happen to care and with which I have a measure of aptitude. I also realize that my scribblings here will not amount to even a blip on the cultural radar. Be that as it may.

I am especially interested in the work of older critics, critics whose work appeared in the early and mid-twentieth century. I find these critics especially useful precisely because of their distance from the present. As I’ve noted elsewhere, if we read only contemporary sources on tech, we would be unlikely to overcome our chief obstacle: our thinking is already shaped by the very phenomena we seek to understand. The older critics offer a fresh vantage point and effectively new perspectives. They begin with different assumptions and operate with forgotten norms. Moreover, their mistakes will not be ours.

As far as the human-technology relationship is concerned, the three ways of being-with technology that Mitcham outlines are ancient skepticism, Renaissance/Enlightenment optimism, and Romantic uneasiness.

The first thing that came to mind when I read this paragraph was the digital dualism debate. One could, for instance, substitute the human-technology pair above with the online-offline pair and retain the sense of the paragraph. Once mutuality is established, the next, more interesting move is to explore the different forms this mutual relationship takes.