FOR more than thirty years now, people have been wondering what man's place is going to be in regard to technology. We can discern two currents in these reflections.
For some, the essence is the relationship between man and the machine. This group is subdivided in two: those who feel that man and machine will combine and those who feel that man will simply be excluded by the machine. And again, each of these two interpretations is further subdivided in two. Some people speak of the "man/machine"
coupling, which is the more reasonable conception (both man and machine perfectly adjusted to one another and functioning in terms of one another). And then some people, in science fiction, speak of a mutation in man, who will turn purely into a brain and nervous system, while the machine will become man's body, the integration being thus whole, like a graft.
In the exclusion current, we find two views: an optimistic opinion (man excluded from all hard work and able to devote himself to spiritual elevations and the joys of creation); and a pessimistic opinion (man excluded from all activity, becoming parasitical and superfluous, or ultimately wiped out by the revolt of the robots).
All this is very shallow, because it sticks totally to the fragmentary and parcellary vision of machines, thousands of machines, regarded singly, with man also perceived as an individual. There is no grasp here of the technological system or even the technological phenomenon. We can leave all this aside.
The other great current (if we skip mystics like Teilhard de Chardin) attempts a more inclusive view and more or less accepts
the idea of a technological society. But these people remain far too vague and utterly hazy. They talk about consumption, leisure, etc. The point is no longer machines or mechanization but that we are living in a technological system. And this makes it obvious that the problem of the relationship between man and technology can no longer be posed in a traditional way. This conclusion will not try to sketch any solutions (to be saved for a later work). Nor will it deal with disadvantages and dysfunctions of the system (to be studied in the book following this one), which can be envisaged as the starting point for feedback toward completing the system. Simply, we have to ask ourselves what will actually become of man in this system and whether we can preserve the hope, so often formulated by idealists, that man will "take in hand," direct, organize, choose, and orient technology.
Seligman, in a striking formula, has emphasized the technological mutation in this area: Homo faber no longer exists; he has become a working animal. And the man who used to be at the center of work, for whom (as Marx kept pointing out) work had a decisive meaning—that man is now gradually being evacuated from work. He finds himself, as Seligman puts it "at the periphery of work.” We must then ask the question: Who is the man to whom one attributes the power of choice, decision, initiative, orientation? No longer a Greek in the time of Pericles, or a Hebrew prophet, or a twelfth-century monk. He is a man who is entirely immersed in technology. He is not autonomous in regard to these objects. He is not sovereign, nor does he have an irreformable personality.
Man's situation in the system can be analyzed in five propositions.
First of all, man, achieving consciousness, finds technology already here. For him, technology constitutes a milieu which he enters and in which he integrates.1 It is quite futile to say that technology is not a true environment. Anything man lays eyes on or makes use of is a technological object. He does not have to choose between alternatives.
He is instantly within this universe of machines and products. And the most innocent items, the electric button or the water faucet, bear the most immediate witness to this technicity. Now without our realizing it, this environment shapes us in the necessary forms of behavior, the ideological outlooks. Who would contest this "already here"? It is taken for granted and acquired. It is taken for granted that rapid transportation and medicine are used. They are not questioned. Why shouldn't they be used? Very quickly, man thinks in conformity with this
environ-ment. He is formed for comfort and efficiency. If a person awakes to consciousness, he would no more dream of challenging or contesting the technological milieu in its perceptible aspects than a twelfth-century man would dream of objecting to trees, rain, a waterfall. These are self-evident things that very swiftly adapt this man to the engulfing reality of the phenomenon. Of course, he does not clearly see what it is all about, he does not discern the "technological system," the "laws" of technology.
But neither did the twelfth-century man know the physical, chemical, biological "laws" and the processes uniting into a whole the phenomena that he perceived as separate. Being situated in this technological universe and yet not detecting the system is the best condition for being integrated into it, being part of it as a matter of course, without even realizing it.
This situation is complemented by the fact that all intellectual training prepares one for entering the technological world in a positive and efficacious way. This world has so thoroughly become a milieu as to be the milieu to which the culture, methods, and knowledge of all young people are adapted. Humanism is antiquated and has given way to scientific and technological training because the environment in which the student will be immersed is, first of all, no longer a human, but a technological environment. He is being trained to perform his function2 here, i.e., he is being prepared to exercise a profession; but the latter requires knowing certain technologies and using technological apparatuses.
Education and instruction no longer have anything "gratuitous" about them; they must serve efficiently. And criticism of education always boils down to this: "Students learn masses of useless stuff. The important thing is to prepare them for a profession (i.e., the technologies of some branch).” All present-day schooling tends to become technological, and it is justified in the eyes of the public only if it is rooted in that concrete situation. How, then, could a young person trained in this way make any choices, any decisions about technology? Not only is he born in the midst of technology, not only are his toys technological devices, not only does he use cars, cranes, electric motors from childhood on; but schools prepare him for technological functions; and, more and more, this is the only kind of knowledge he receives.
The celebrated "crisis" of the French university has no other deep source than the maladjustment of this system to technological training.
That is what we call "preparing students to enter society.” We must not forget that education is getting more and more
specialized, with unbelievable rigor. The training of, say, a computer programmer involves six very distinct specializations (system programming, administrative programming, real time programming, etc.).
How can we expect a man thus trained to have even the slightest possibility of criticizing or taking over the technological system.
Furthermore, when he enters a profession, all he encounters is the exercise of technologies. Whatever his job it is chiefly a participation in the technological system, either by what is produced or by what is diffused. There again, how could he challenge what is ultimately the warp and woof of his life?
In short, technological man is divided into two modes of being.3 On the one hand, he is at close quarters with his technology, his specialty.
He is very competent in his domain, he knows and sees clearly what he has to do with increasingly greater efficiency. But this remains within a narrowly limited sector. On the other hand, he is on the same level as anyone else: he knows the world and the political and economic problems only through partial and partisan information, he has half an understanding of the issues, a quarter knowledge of the facts, and his competence in his own domain is useless for helping him to grasp or know the general phenomena on which, ultimately, everything depends.
This influence is a lot greater than that of school or work. The technological system contains its own agents of adjustment. Advertising, mass media entertainment, political propaganda, human and public relations—all these things, with superficial divergences, have one single function: to adapt man to technology; to furnish him with psychological satisfactions, motivations that will allow him to live and work efficiently in this universe. The entire mental panorama in which man is situated is produced by technicians and shapes man to a technological universe, the only one reflected toward him by anything represented to him. Not only does he live spontaneously in the technological environment, but advertising and entertainment offer the image, the reflection, the hypostasis of that environment.
This mode of conditioning has already created a new psychological type (see the detailed account in L. Mumford's The Myth of the Machine):
a type bearing, almost since birth, the imprint of the metatechnology in all its forms; a type incapable of reacting directly to visual or aural objects, to the forms of concrete things, incapable of functioning without anxiety in any domain, and even incapable of feeling alive unless authorized or commanded by a machine and with the aid of the extra-organic apparatus furnished
by the machine deity. In so many cases this conditioning has already reached a point of total dependence. This state of conformity was hailed, by the most sinister prophets of the regime, as the supreme "liberation" of mankind. Liberation from what? Liberation from the conditions in which men prospered: namely, an active relationship, a relationship of mutually gratifying exchange with a human and natural environment that was
"nonprogrammed," varied, responsive, an environment full of difficulties, temptations, hard choices, challenges, surprises, unexpected rewards.4
Here, once again, the first steps toward control seemed innocent enough. Consider B. F. Skinner's teaching machine. It is apparently and immediately legitimate! And yet, it is a simple means of technological adaptation. Admen and PR men do not, of course, have any deep, perverse intention.5 But the true and ultimate result of their work is to defuse the spontaneous reactions against the technological system, more completely integrate every spectator or consumer into it, and induce him to work toward technological growth. Certain advertising technicians even have those express aims. All who are preoccupied with the society of tomorrow assume that the only thing to do is deliberately prepare people for life in the technology of tomorrow. Thus, since TV will progress in any event, since we roughly know what the strides will be like during the next twenty years, all we need do is prepare mankind in advance.
"We have to get organized today for tomorrow's TV" (Closets).
However, the future they envisage is one of culture and freedom. It is therefore quite remarkable to note that when appearances lead us to think that the created image is nontechnological, we quickly perceive that it is actually even more integrating. The media do not always reflect the technological universe directly and straightforwardly; they do not always present it as it is, cultivating its virtues. Often, they give us seemingly reverse images of reality. For instance, the idea of spare-time activity is propagated more and more. Naturally, it is correct that our society has more means of distraction available and that we profit perhaps from more spare-time activities (a very moot point). But this must instantly be corrected. This image we receive is, first of all, the reverse of the true situation, for this world is one in which man works more than he has ever worked before. This wishful image of spare time is meant to help us endure the excess and boredom of work. The more burdensome our jobs, the more glorious and triumphant the propa-
gated image of free time. Work is not brought up, it is the grayness of everyday life. Leisure is the "meaning" of life, it is the grace "given" to us—but there is no contradiction here; in reality, the image of leisure helps people adjust to the technological necessity.
This theme of spare time granted by technology must be viewed parallel with the praise of technology for increasing and improving culture. I do not want to get into a discussion of whether this notion is accurate, if there is not, in fact, a deculturation caused by technology, if the very concept of culture is not ambiguous (B. Charbonneau, Le Paradoxe de la culture). I will simply take the fact of the encomium to and profound conviction of modern man's intellectual and artistic growth thanks to technology. This widespread outlook only expresses man's gratitude to technology. It expresses the profound conviction of validity, of authenticity, that all of us have. We are spontaneously grateful to TV, the stereo, or the marvelous pictorial reproductions. And we are utterly frustrated when deprived of such boons, which are part and parcel of our very lives. This gratitude puts a nimbus around technology and reveals our thorough assimilation.
It is essential to realize that the man always spoken of is now a technicized man.6 And there can be no other orientation. When we investigate a "culture" or a humanism for technological society, we always do so on the assumption that the human being in question is, above all, meant for technology, and that the sole great problem is adjustment. And this state of affairs is even more striking when the people who do see the gravity of the issue and take fright at "technocracy" fail to perceive any other solution than permanent "continuous education," in the charge of those using it—but an education that is basically and ultimately technological.7
Are we to believe that the society of leisure or culture is not technological? Far from it. Obviously, we are shown an access to leisure or culture only in league with the development of technologies replacing human activity and making human labor superfluous. And leisure? All it ever consists of is using technological things, transportation, games, etc.
And very swiftly, as leisure becomes a "mass" thing (what else could it become), spare-time activities have to be organized. Imagine allowing anyone to be completely independent and do whatever flashes into his mind! The organization of spare-time activities is mainly a technological task, requiring a high degree of technicity to achieve satisfactory results, i.e., results giving a full impression of leisure and
seem-ingly effacing the technological imperative. For the apex of technological development is the disappearance of the apparatus, the ugly, cumbersome device that is too reminiscent of materiality.
Modern apartments no longer have any heating gadgets. The electric wires have vanished. All mechanical things disappear backstage, letting you live in a marvelously nonarduous universe, where every gesture brings satisfaction without revealing the technological intermediary, which remains imperceptible. Thus, the technological system engulfs the individual, and he never even realizes it. He only receives immense satisfactions from it. But one of the specific features of this universe is its diffusion of images that are the reverse of reality: the maximum technological complexity produces the image of maximum simplicity. The intense mobilization of man for work convinces him that he dwells in a society of leisure. The decrease of means conjures up an appearance of immediacy. The universality of the technological environment produces the image of a Nature.
And this leads us to a new proposition. Everyone knows and takes for granted that technology responds to human needs, to permanent desires. No use belaboring this point. Man has always run after anything that would still his hunger; he has always sought more efficient means; he has always tried to spare himself drudgery; he has always wanted to ensure his safety. He has tried to know and understand. He has dreamt of walking on the moon and traveling through space. He has dreamt of mastering the fire in the sky . . . Technology makes his oldest needs and his youngest strivings come true. It gives body to his dreams. It responds to his desires.
I cannot understand the people who exalt desire as the form of man's independence and liberation from the technological universe—as if desire could have any nontechnological object, any nontechnological means of realization today! It is utterly childish to speak of unleashing desire as the final human expression against the environment of rigor organized by a technological society. Desire is responded to in technologies. And if people exalt the total liberation of sexual desire, they ought to ask what makes liberation possible. The answer? The pill—a technological product. Technology is not only enshackling and rigorous in the simplistic way that is now pointed out: it is "liberating" by making us enter more deeply into the technological system.
Yet some observers try to oppose desire and technology, making desire the escape, the response, the opening of possibility; and
they base their outlook on Freud's analyses. This outlook is doubly fallacious, invisibly leading to a metaphysical position. It is quite true that desire is fundamental, that it far exceeds any realizations, that it pushes man forward without respite, and that anything satisfying desire today is promptly obsolete. But what eludes this beatific vision is that man in our society knows and is able to picture only one way to realize and satisfy his desires: the technological way. Technology works so many unexpected wonders that when a desire crops up spontaneously, man automatically seeks the answer in some technological product or other.
Nor do the student revolts, the critics of the consumer society avoid this error. Anything but! Hence, the exaltation of desire plunges us all the more rapidly into technological growth.
And this brings up the other error. Since technology is rational, it seems to contradict the fundamental impulse of being. But this is a misassumption about technology, which is far more deeply an utterance of hubris. At this point, I can only call attention to J. Brun's remarkable study Le Retour de Dionysos (1969). Brun shows quite cogently that technology is not a cold, blind machine, but an exalting dance of Dionysus. Hence, technology and desire are perfectly matched. In our society, the exaltation of desire can only advance via technology. To reveal this deep kinship between human needs and their technological satisfaction, we do not have to add long discussions on the subject of what some people call the "new or artificial needs" created by technology and advertising, while others hold that there is nothing new and that we
And this brings up the other error. Since technology is rational, it seems to contradict the fundamental impulse of being. But this is a misassumption about technology, which is far more deeply an utterance of hubris. At this point, I can only call attention to J. Brun's remarkable study Le Retour de Dionysos (1969). Brun shows quite cogently that technology is not a cold, blind machine, but an exalting dance of Dionysus. Hence, technology and desire are perfectly matched. In our society, the exaltation of desire can only advance via technology. To reveal this deep kinship between human needs and their technological satisfaction, we do not have to add long discussions on the subject of what some people call the "new or artificial needs" created by technology and advertising, while others hold that there is nothing new and that we