THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY JACQUES ELLUL

 

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TECHN IQUES
No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique
in the modem world. And yet no subject is so little understood.
Let us try to set up some guideposts to situate the technical
phenomenon.
Situating the Technical Phenomeno,.
Machines and Technique. Whenever we see the word technology
or technique, we automatically think of machines. Indeed, we
commonly think of our world as a world of machines. This notionwhich
is in fact an error-is found, for example, in the works of
Oldham and Pierre Ducasse. It arises from the fact that the machine
is the most obvious, massive, and impressive example of technique,
and histOrically the first. What is called the history of technique
usually amounts to no more than a history of the machine;
this very formulation is an example of the habit of intellectuals of
regarding forms of the present as identical with those of the past.
Technique certainly began with the machine. It is quite true
that all the rest developed out of mechanics; it is quite true also that
without the machine the world of technique would not exist. But
 t o explain the situation in this way doe s not a t all legitimatize it. It
is a mistake to continue with this confusion of terms, the more so
because it leads to the idea that, because the machine is at the
origin and center of the technical problem, one is dealing with the
whole problem when one deals with' the machine. And that is a
greater mistake still. Technique has now become almost completely
independent of the machine, which has lagged far behind
its offspring.
It must be emphasized that, at present, technique is applied outside
industrial life. The growth of its power today has no relation
to the growing use of the machine. The balance seems rather to
have shifted to the other side. It is the machine which is now entirely
dependent upon technique, and the machine represents only
a small part of technique. If we were to characterize the relations
between technique and the machine today, we could say not only
that the machine is th6 result of a certain technique, but also that
its social and economic applications are made possible by other
technical advances. The machine is now not even the most important
aspect of technique ( though it is perhaps the most spectacular
) ; technique has taken over all of man's activities, not just his
productive activity.
From another point of view, however, the machine is deeply
symptomatic: it represents the ideal toward which technique
strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique; it is pure
􀃘hnique, one might say. For, wherever a tf,C'hn;eal factor exists, it
results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms
everything it touches into a machine.
Another relationship exists between technique and the machine,
and this relationship penetrates to the very /,0,." of the problem of
our civilization. It is said ( and everyone agrees ) that the machine
has created an inhuman atmosphere. The machine, 􀃙o characteristic
of the nineteenth century, made an abrupt entrance into a society
which, from the political, institutional, and human points of
view, was not made to receive it; and man has had to put up with it
as best he can. Men now live in conditions that are less than human.
Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack
of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights
that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories,
our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from
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nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning. Consider our
public transportation, in which man is less important than a parcel;
our hospitals, in which he is only a number. Yet we call this pIOgress.
• . • And the noise, that monster boring into us at every hour
of the night without respite.
It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create
our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to prove
the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print. And.
if we do not wish to play the demagogue, we must point out the
guilty party. Ihe machine is antisocial,w says Lewis Mumford. it
tends, by reason of its progreSSive character, to the most acute
forms of 􀀋uman exploitation.􀂻 The machine took its place in a social
milieu that was not made for it, and for that reason created the inhuman
society in which we live. Capitalism was therefore only one
aspect of the deep disorder of the nineteenth century. To restore
order, it was necessary to 'question all the bases of that societyits
social and political structures, its art and its way of life, its commercial
system.
But let the machine have its head, and it topples everything that
cannot support its enormous weight. Thus everything had to be re­
considered in terms of the machine. And that is precisely the role
technique plays. In all fields it made an inventory of what it could
use, of everything that couId be brought into line with the machine.
The machine could not integrate itself into nineteenthcentury
society; technique integrated it. Old houses that were not
suited to the workers were torn down; and the new world technique
required was built in their place. Technique has enough of
the mechanical in its nature to enable it to cope with the machine,
but it surpasses and transcends the machine because it remains in
close touch with the human order. The metal monster could not
go on forever torturing mankind. It found in technique a rule as
hard and inflexible as itself.
Technique integrates the machine into SOCiety, It constructs the
kind of world the machine needs and introduces order where the incoherent
banging of machinery heaped up ruins. It clarifies, ar,
ranges, and rationalizes; it does in the domain of the abstract what
the machine did in the domain of labor. It is efficient and bringl
efficiency to everything. Moreover, technique is sparing in the uso
of the machine, which has traditionally been explOited to conceal
6 ) TECHNIQUES
defects of organization. "Machines sanctioned social inefficiency,"
says Mumford. Technique, on the other hand, leads to a more
rational and less indiscriminate use of machines. It places machines
exactly where they ought to be and requires of them just
what they ought to do
This brings us to two contrasting forms of social growth. Henri
Guitton says: "Social growth was formerly reflexive or instinctive,
that is to say, unconscious. But new circumstances ( the machine )
now compel us to recognize a kind of social development that is rational,
intelligent, and conscious. We may ask ourselves whether
this is the beginning not only of the era of a spatially finite world but
also of the era of a conscious world." All-embracing technique is
in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world.
Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational
events. Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him
to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man
can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges, without
the anguish of being delivered up to the inhuman. Technique thus
provides a model; it specifies attitudes that are valid once and for
all. The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is
soothed by the consoling hum of a unified SOciety.
As long as technique was represented exclUSively by the machine,
it was possible to speak of "man and the machine." The machine
remained an external object, and man ( though Significantly
influenced by it in his professional, rrivRt .... and psychic life ) remained
none the less independent. He was in a position to assert
himself apart from the machine; he was able to adopt a position
with respect to it.
But when technique ente-rs into pvpry Rrea of life, including the
human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance.
It is no longer face to face with man but is integrated with
him, and it progreSSively absorbs him. In this respect, technique is
radically different from the machine. This transformation, so obvious
in modem SOCiety, is the result of the fact that technique has
become autonomous.
When I state that technique leads to mechanization, I am not
referring to the simple fact of human adaptation to the machine. Of
course, !Uch a process of adaptation exists, but it is caused by the acThe
Technological Society
tion of the machine. What we are concerned with here, however, is
a kind of mechanization in itself. If we may ascribe to the machine
a superior form of "know-how," the mechanization which results
from technique is the application of this higher form to aU domains
hitherto foreign to the machine; we can even say that technique is
characteristic of precisely that realm in which the machine itself
can play no role. It is a radical error to think of technique and machine
as interchangeable; from the very beginning we must be on
guard against this misconception.
Science and Technique. Almost immediately we come up against
a second problem. It is true that it is another pons asinorum; one
hesitates even to mention it since the question has been so often
discussed. The relation between science and technique is a standard
subject for graduate theses-in all the trappings of nineteenthcentury
experimental science. Everyone has been taught that technique
is an application of science; more particularly ( science being
pure speculation ) , technique figures as the point of contact between
material reality and the scientific formula. But it also appears as
the practical product, the application of the formulas to practical
life.
This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only
a Single category of science and only a short period of time : it is
true only for the physical sciences and for the nineteenth century. It
is not possible therefore to base a general study on it nor, as we are
attempting to do here, an up-to-date review of the situation.
A few simple remarks suffice to destroy our confidence in these
views. Historically. technique preceded science; even primitive man
was acquainted with certain techniques. The first techniques of
Hellenistic civilization were Oriental; they were not derived from
Greek science. Thus. historically speaking, the relationship between
science and technique ought to be reversed.
However, technique began to develop and extend itself only after
science appeared; to progress, technique had to wait for science.
Bertrand Gille has rightly said, in this historical perspective : "Technique,
by means of repeated experiments, posed the problems,
derived general notions and the four primary elements; but it had
to wait for the solutions"-which science provided.
In the present era, the most casual inspection reveals an entirely
8 ) TECHNIQUES
different relationship. In every instance, it is clear that the border
between technical activity and scientific activity is not at all sharply
defined.
When we speak 01: technique in historical science, we mean a certain
kind of preparatory work : textual research, reading, collation,
study of monuments, criticism, and exegesis. These represent an
ensemble of technical operations which aim first at interpretation
and then at historical synthesiS, the true work of science. Here,
again, technique comes first.
Even in physics, in certain instances, technique precedes science.
The best-known example is the stearn engine, a pure achievement of
experimental genius. The sequence of inventions and improvements
of Solomon De Caus, Christian Huygens, Denes Papin, Thomas
Savery, and so on, rest on practical trial and error. The scientific
explanation of the various phenomena involved was to corne much
later, after a lapse of two centuries, and even then it was not easy to
formulate. There is still no automatic link between science and
technique. The relation is not that simple; there is more and more
interaction between them. Today all scientific research presupposes
enormous technical preparation ( as, for example, in atomic research
) . And very often it is some simple technical modification
which allows further scientific progress.
When the technical means do not exist, science does not advance.
Michael Faraday was aware of the most recent discoveries concerning
the constitution of matter, but was unable to formulate precise
theories because techniques for the production of vacua did not yet
exist. Scientific results had to await high-vacuum techniques. The
medical value of penicillin was discovered in 1912, by a French
physician, but he had no technical means of producing and conserving
penicillin; misgivings therefore arose about the discovery
and led to its even tual abandonment,
The majority of investigators in a laboratory are technicians who
perform tasks far removed from what is commonly imagined to be
scientific work. The research worier is no longer a solitary genius.
As Robert Jungk says : "He works as a member of a team and is willing
to give up his freedom of research as well as personal recognition
in exchange for the assistance and equipment a great laboratory
offers him. These two things are the indispensable conditions without
which he cannot even dream of realizing his projects. . . ,"'
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Pure science seems to be yielding its place to an applied science
which now and again reaches a brilliant peak from which new
technical research becomes possible. Conversely, certain technical
modifications-in airplanes, for instance-which may seem simple
and mechanica}, presuppose complex scientific work. The problem
of reaching supersonic velocities is one. The considered opinion of
Norbert Wiener is that the younger generation of research workers
in the United States consists primarily of technicians who are unable
to do research at all without the help of machines, large teams
of men, and enormous amounts of money.
The relation between science and technique becomes even less
clear when we consider the newer fields, which have no boundaries.
Where does biological technique begin and where does it end? In
modem psychology and SOCiology, what can we call technique,
since in the application of these sciences everything is technique?
But it is not application which characterizes technique, for, without
technique ( previous or concomitant ) , science has no way of
existing. If we disown technique, we abandon the domain of science
and enter into that of hypothesis and theory. In political economy
( despite the recent elIorts of economists to distinguish tIle boundaries
between science and economic technique ) , we shall demonstrate
that it is economic technique which forms the very substance
of economic thought.
The established foundations have indeed been shaken. But the
problem of these relations, in view of the enormity of the technical
world and the reduction of the scientific, would seem to be an academic
problem of interest only to philosophers-speculation without
content. Today it is no longer the frontiers of science which are
at issue, but the frontiers of man; and the technical phenomenon is
much more Significant with regard to the human situation than
with regard to the scientific. It is no longer in reference to science
that technique must be defined. We need not pursue philosophy of
science here, or establish, ideally or intellectually, what may be the
relations between action and science. What we must do is look about
us and note certain obvious things which seem to escape the all too
intelligent philosophers.
It is not a question of minimizing the importance of scientific activity,
but of recognizing that in fact scientific activity has been
superseded by technical activity to such a degree that we can no
1 0 ) TECHNIQUES
longer conceive of science without its technical outcome. As Charles
Camichel has observed, the two are closer than ever before. The
very fact that techniques advance with great rapidity demands a
corresponding scientific advance, and sets off a general acceleration.
Moreover, techniques are always put to immediate use. The interval
which traditionally separates a scientific discovery and its
application in everyday life has been progressively shortened. As
soon as a discovery is made, a concrete application is sought. Capital
becomes interested, or the state, and the discovery enters the
public domain before anyone has had a chance to reckon all the
consequences or to recognize its full import. The scientist might act
more prudently; he might even be afraid to launch his carefully calculated
laboratory findings into the world. But how can he resist
the pressure of the facts? How can he resist the pressure of money?
How is he to resist success, publicity, public acclaim? Or the general
state of mind which makes technical application the last word?
How is he to resist the desire to pursue his research? Such is the
dilemma of the researcher today. Either he allows his findings to be
technologically applied or he is forced to break off his research.
Such is the drama of the atomic physicists who saw that only the
laboratories at Los Alamos could provide them with the technical
instruments necessary to the continuation of their work. The state,
then, exercises a very real monopoly, and the scientist is obliged to
acccpt its conditions. As one of the atomic .ci"llti,ls put it: "'What
keeps me here is the possibility of using for my work a special microscope
which exists nowhere else" ( Jungk ) . The scientist is no
longer able to hold out : "Even science, especially the magnificent
sciCiice of Gur G􀁋·.:vn d􀃗y, has bCC[ii:ne an eleI:(ient of It::l:huillue, a
mere means" ( Mauss ) . There we have, indeed, the final word :
science has become an instrument of technique.
Later, we shall consider how it has come about that scientific
utilitarianism has gained such momentum from technique that a
disinterested piece of research is no longer possible. It has always
been necessary to have a scientific substructure, but today it is
scarcely possible to effect a separation between scientific and technical
research. Indeed, our omnivorous technique ( and this represents
in part Einstein's thought ) may in the end make science
sterile.
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I shall often use the term technique in place of the more commonly
used term science, and designate as techniques work that is
usually termed scientific. This is due to the close association of
technique and science which I have pointed out and which I shall
discuss more fully later on.
Organization and Technique. A third element will help us formulate
our problem more clearly. I have already pOinted out that we
must understand the term technique in a broader sense. But some
authors, not wishing to deviate from traditional linguistic usage,
prefer to keep to its current meaning and seek another term to
designate the phenomena we are describing here.
According to Arnold Toynbee, history is divided into three periods,
and it is on the pOint of passing from the technical period
into the period of organization. I agree with Toynbee that mechanical
technique no longer characterizes our times. However important
and impressive mechanical technique remains, it is only accessory
to other factors which are 1I1uch more decisive, if less spectacular.
I have in mind the vast amount of organization in every field, the
recognition of which led James Burnham to write The Managerial
Revolution.
But I cannot agree with Toynbee in his choice of terms or in the
line he draws between the technical period and the period of organization.
In his sketchy conception of technique, for which he
has been severely criticized, the confusion between machine and
technique remains. He has limited the realm of technique to what
it was in the past, without considering what it is now.
In reality, what Toynbee calls organization, and Burnham calls
managerial action, is technique applied to social, economic, or administrative
life. What but technique is the "organization" defined
in the following? "Organization is the process which consists in
assigning appropriate tasks to individuals or to groups so as to attain,
in an efficient and economic way, and by the coordination
and combination of all their activities, the objectives agreed upon"
( Sheldon ) . This leads to the standardization and the rationalization
of economic and administrative life, as Antoine Mas has well
shown. "Standardization means resolving in advance all the problems
that might possibly impede the functioning of an organization_
It is not a matter of leaving it to inspiration, ingenuity, nor even
intelligence to find a solution at the moment some difficulty arises;
it is rather in some way to anticipate both the difficulty and its
resolution. From then on, standardization creates Impersonality, in
the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions
than on individuals." We thus have all the maries of a technique.
Organization is a technique-and Andre L. A. Vincent had good
reason to write: "To approach the optimum combination of factors,
or the optimum dimension is • . . to accomplish technical progress
in the form of a better organization."
It will no doubt be asked: What is the point of discussing these
terms, since, at bottom, you are in agreement with Toynbee? But
these discussions are important: Toynbee separates centuries and
phenomena which ought to remain united. He would have us believe
that organization is something other than technique, that man
has in a way discovered a new field of action and new methods,
and that we must study organization as a new phenomenon, when
it is nothing of the sort. I, on the other hand, insist on the continuity
of the technical process. It is this process which is taking on
• new aspect (I would say, its tme aspect) and is developing on a
world-wide scale.
What are the consequences? The first is that the problems created
by mechanical technique will be heightened to a degree as
yet incalculable, as a result of the application of technique to administration
anq to aU spheres of life. Toynbee believes that this
organization which is succeeding technique is in some way a counterbalance
to it, and a remedy (and that is a comforting view of
history). But it seems to me that the exact opposite is true, that this
development adds to the technical problems by offering a partial
solution to old problems, itself based on the very methods that
created the problems in the first place. This is the age-old procedure
of digging a new hole to fill up an old one.
A second consequence: If what we are witnessing is only an extension
of the domain of technique, what was said above about
mechanization is understandable. Toynbee writes of organization
as a phenomenon whose effects cannot yet be seen. However, we
can be confident that the final result will be that technique will
assimilate everything to the machine; the ideal for which technique
strives is the mechanization of everything it encounters. It is clear,
therefore, that my opposition to Toynbee, even if it appears to be
merely verbal, is Significant. The technical age continues to adThe
Technological Society {13
vance and we cannot even say that we are at the peak of its expansion
. In fact, some decisive conque5ts remain to be made-­
man, among others-and it is hard to see what is to prevent
technique from making them. Thus, even if this is not a question
of a new factor, it is at least clear now what the phenomenon involves
and what it signifies.
Definitions. Once we stop identifying technique and machine, the
definitions of technique we find are inadequate to the established
facts. Marcel Mauss, the SOCiologist, understands the problem admirably,
and has given various definitions of technique, some of
which are excellent. Let us take one that is open to criticism and,
by criticizing it, state our ideas more precisely: "Technique is a
group of movements, of actions generally and mostly manual, or.
ganized, and traditional, all of which unite to reach a known end,
, for example, phYSical, chemical or organic:
This definition is perfectly valid for the SOCiologist who deat.
with the primitive. It offers, as Mauss shows, numerous advantages.
For example, it eliminates from the realm of techniques questions
of religion or art (magiC, however, ought to be classified among
techniques, as we shall see later). But these advantages apply only
in a historical perspective. In the modem perspective, this definition
is insufficient.
Can it be said that the technique of elaboration of an economic
plan (purely a technical operation) is the result of such movement.
as Mauss describes? No particular motion or physical act is involved.
An economic plan is purely an intellectual operation,
which nevertheless is a technique.
When we consider Mauss's statement that technique is restricted
to manual activity, the inadequacy of his definition is even more
apparent. Today most technical operations are not manual
'Vhether machines are substituted for men, or technique becomes
intellectual, the most important sphere in the world today (because
in it lie the seeds of future development) is scarcely that of manual
labor. True, manual labor is still the basis of mechanical operation,
and we would do well to recall Junger's principal argument
against the illusion of technical progress. He holds that the more
technique is perfected, the more it requires secondary manual
labor; and, furthermore, that the volume of manual operations
increases faster than the volume of mechanical operations. This
may be so, but the most important feature of techniques today is
that they do not depend on manual labor but on organization and
on the arrangement of machines.
I am willing to accept the term organized, as Mauss uses it in
his definition, but I must part company with him in respect to his
use of the term traditional. And this diHerentiates the technique of
today from that of previous civilizations. It is true that in all civilizations
technique has existed as tradition, that is, by the transmission
of inherited processes that slowly ripen and are even more slowly
modified; that evolve under the pressure of circumstances along
with the body social; that create automatisms which become
hereditary and are integrated into each new form of technique.
But how can anyone fail to see that none of this holds true today?
Technique has become autonomous; it has fashioned an omnivorous
world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all
tradition. Technique no longer rests on tradition, but rather on
previous technical procedures; and its evolution is too rapid, too
upsetting, to integrate the older traditions. This fact, which we
shall study at some length later on, also explains why it is not
quite true that a technique assures a result known in advance. It
is true if one considers only the user: the driver of an automobile
knows that he can expect to go faster when he steps on the accelerator.
But even in the field of the mechanical, with the advent
of the technique of servo-mechanisms,' this axiom does not hold
true. In these cases the machine itself adapts as it operates; this
very fact makes it difficult to predict the final result of its activity.
This becomes clear when one considers not use but technical
progress-although, at the present time, the two are closely associated.
It is less and less exact to maintain that the user remains
for very long in possession of a technique the results of which he
can predict; constant invention ceaselessly upsets his habits.
Finally, Mauss appears to think that the goal attained is of a
chemical or a physical order. But today we recognize that techniques
go further. Psychoanalysis and SOciology have passed into
the sphere of technical application; one example of this is propa-
1 Mechanisms which involve so-called "feedback," In which Information measuring
the degree to which an effector (e.g., an oil furance) is in error with respect to
prodUcing a desired value (e.g., a fixed room temperature) is "fed back" 10 the
effector by a monitor (e.g., a thennOital). (Tr8Jl5.)
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ganda. Here the operation is of a moral, psychic, and spiritual
character. However, that does not prevent it from being a technique.
But what we are talking about is a world once given over
to the pragmatic approach and now being taken over by method.
We can say, therefore, that Mauss's definition, which was valid for
technique until the eighteenth century, is not applicable to our
times. In this respect Mauss has been the victim of his own sociological
studies of primitive people, as his classification of techniques
(food gathering, the making of garments, transport, etc.)
clearly shows.
Further examples of inadequate definition are those supplied by
Jean Fourastit§ and others who pursue the same line of research as
he. For Fourastie, technical progress is "the growth of the volume
of production obtained through a fixed quantity of raw material or
human labor"-that is, technique is uniquely that which promotes
this increase in yield. He then goes on to say that it is possible to
analyze this theorem under three aspects. In yield in kind, technique
is that which enables raw materials to be managed in order
to obtain some predetermined product; in financial yield, technique
is that which enables the increase in production to take place
through the increase of capital investment; in yield of human labor,
technique is that which increases the quantity of work produced
by a fixed unit of human labor. In this connection we must thank
Fourastie for correcting Junger's error-Junger opposes technical
progress to economic progress because they would be, in his opinion,
contradictory; Fourastie shows that, on the contrary, the two
coincide. However, we must nevertheless challenge his definition
of technique on the ground that it is completely arbitrary.
It is arbitrary, first of all, because it is purely economic and
contemplates only economic yield. There are innumerable traditional
techniques which are not based on a quest for economic
yield and which have no economic character. It is precisely these
which Mauss alludes to in his definition; and they still exist.
Among the myriad modern techniques, there are many which have
nothing to do with economic life. Take, for example, a technique of
mastication based on the science of nutrition, or techniques of
sport, as in the Boy Scout movement-in these cases we can see a
kind of yield, but this yield has little to do with economics.
In other cases, there are economic results, but these results are
secondary and cannot be said to be characteristic. Take, for example,
the modem calculating machine. The solving of equations
in seventy variables, required in certain econometric research, is
impossible except with an electronic calculating machine. However,
it is not the economic productivity which results from the
utilization of this machine by which its importance is measured.
A second criticism of Fourastie's definition is that he assigns an
exclusively productive character to technique. The growth of the
volume of production is an even narrower concept than yield. The
techniques which have shown the greatest development are not
techniques of production at alL For example, techniques in the care
of human beings (surgery, psychology, and so on) have nothing
to do with productivity. The most modern techniques of destruction
have even less to do with productivity; the atomic and hydrogen
bombs and the Germans' VI and Vz weapons are all examples
of the most powerful technical creations of man's mind. Human
ingenuity and mechanical skill are today being exploited along
lines which have little reference to productivity.
Nothing equals the perfection of our war machines. Warships and
warplanes are vastly more perfect than their counterparts in civilian
life. The organization of the army-its transport, supplies,
administration-is much more precise than any civilian organization.
The smalle.􀃈t error in the realm of war would cost countless
lives and would be measured in terms of victory or defeat.
What is the yield there? Very poor, on the whole. Where is the
productivity? There is none.
Vincent, in his definition, likewise refers to productivity: "Technical
progress is the relative variation in world production in a
given sphere between two given periods." This definition, useful of
course from the economic point of view, leads him at once into a
dilemma. He is obliged to distinguish technical progress from
progress of technique (which corresponds to the progression of
techniques in all :fields) and to distinguish these two from Htechnical
progress, properly speaking," which concerns variations in
productivity. This is an inference made from natural phenomena,
for, in his definition. Vincent is obliged to recognize that technical
progress includes natural phenomena (the greater or lesser richness
of an ore, of the soil, etc.) by definition the very contrary of technique!
The Technological Society (17
These linguistic acrobatics and hairsplittings suffice to prove the
inanity of such a definition, which aims at a single aspect of technical
progress and includes elements which do not belong to technique.
From this definition, Vincent infers that technical progress
is slow. But what is true of economic productivity is not true of
technical progress in general. If one considers technique shorn of
one whole part, and that its most progressive, one can indeed assert
that it is slow in its progress. This abstraction is even more illusory
when one claims to measure technical progress. The definition
proposed by Fourastie is inexact because it excludes everything
which does not refer to production, and all effects which are not
economic.
This tendency to reduce the technical problem to the dimensions
of the technique of production is also present in the works of so
enlightened a scholar as Georges Friedmann. In his introduction to
the UNESCO Colloquium on technique, he appears to start out
with a very broad definition. But in the second paragraph, without
warning, he begins to reduce everything to the level of economic
production.
What gives rise to this limitation of the problem? One factor
might be a tacit optimism, a need to hold that technical progress
is unconditionally valid-which leads to the selection of the most
positive aspect of technical progress, as though it were its only one.
This may have guided FourastiC, but it does not seem to hold
true in Friedmann's case. I believe that the reasoning behind Friedmann's
way of thinking is to be found in the tum of the scientific
mind. All aspects-mechanical, economic, psychological, socialogical--o
f the techniques of production have been subjected to
innumerable specialized studies; as a result, we are beginning to
learn in a more precise and scientific way about the relationships
between man and the industrial machine. Since the scientist must
use the materials he has at hand; and since almost nothing is mown
about the relationship of man to the automobile, the telephone, or
the radio, and absolutely nothing about the relationship of man to
the Apparat or about the SOciological effects of other aspects of
technique, the scientist moves unconsciously toward the sphere of
what is known scientifically, and tries to limit the whole question
to that.
There is another element in this scientific attitude: only that is
1 B ) TECHNIQUES
knowable which is expressed (or, at least, can be expressed) in
numbers. To get away from the so-called "arbitrary and subjective,"
to escape ethical or literary judgments (which, as everyone
knows, are trivial and unfounded), the scientist must get back to
numbers. What, after all, can one hope to deduce from the purely
qualitative statement that the worker is fatigued? But when biochemistry
makes it possible to measure fatigability numerically, it
is at last possible to take account of the worker's fatigue. Then
there is hope of finding a solution. However, an entire realm of
effects of technique-indeed, the largest-is not reducible to numbers;
and it is precisely that realm which we are investigating in
this work. Yet, since what can be said about it is apparently not
to be taken seriously, it is better for the scientist to shut his eyes
and regard it as a realm of pseudo-problems, or simply as nonexistent.
The "scientific" pOSition frequently consists of denying
the existence of whatever does not belong to current scientific
method. The problem of the industrial machine, however, is a
numerical one in nearly all its aspects. Hence, all of technique is
unintentionally reduced to a numerical question. In the case of
Vincent, this is intentional, as his definition shows: "We embrace in
technical progress all kinds of progress . . . provided that they
are treatable numerically in a reliable way."
H. D. Lasswell's definition of technique as "the ensemble of practices
by which one uses available resources in order to achieve
certain valued ends" also seems to follow thp conventions cited
above, and to embrace only industrial technique. Here it might be
contested whether technique does indeed permit the realization
of values. However, to judge from Lasswell's examples, he conceives
the terms of his definition in an extrpmely broad m:mncr.
He gives a list of values and the corresponding techniques. As
values, for example, he lists riches, power, well-being, affection;
and as techniques, the techniques of government, production,
medicine, the family, and so on. Lasswell's conception of value
may seem somewhat strange; the term is obviously not apt. But
what he has to say indicates that he gives techniques their full
scope. Moreover, he makes it quite clear that it is necessary to
show the effects of technique not only on inanimate objects but
also on people. I am, therefore, in substantial agreement with this
conception.
Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon. With the use
of these few gUideposts, we can now try to fonnulate, if not a full
definition, at least an approximate definition of technique. But we
must keep this in mind: we are not concerned with the different individual
techniques. Everyone practices a particular technique,
and it is difficult to come to know them all. Yet in this great diversity
we can find certain pOints in common, certain tendencies
and principles shared by them all. It is clumsy to call these common
features Technique with a capital T; no one would recognize his
particular technique behind this ternlinology. Nevertheless, it takes
account of a reality-the technical phenomenon-which is worldwide
today.
If we recognize that the method each person employs to attain
a result is in fact, his particular technique, the problem of means
is raised. In fact, technique is nothing more than means and the
ensemble of means. This, of course, does not lessen the importance
of the problem. Our civilization is first and foremost