List

A perennial debate in technology studies is over the question of agency and determinism. Does technology drive history? Is technology socially constructed? Who or what exercises agency in sociotechnical development? In this blog, I summarize and analyze the ideas that have emerged from this debate that I find most useful. Specifically, I  touch on the work of Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner.

For Ellul, “when technique enters into every area of life, including the human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance.”[1] Donna Haraway has taken this point to the extreme, suggesting that humans are cyborgs, inextricably linked to their devices, not only to participate in social life, but in their conceptions of self.[2] “This transformation, so obvious in modern society,” wrote Ellul, “is the result of the fact that technique has become autonomous.”[3] By autonomous, Ellul meant that “technique pursues its own course more and more independently of man.”[4] Humans are directed to technical ends by their reliance upon its means for every aspect of their lives, whereby humans are “reduced to the level of a catalyst…”[5] It is not technology alone that requires this relationship, but the role of technology in society. “When technique enters into the realm of social life, it collides ceaselessly with the human being to the degree that the combination of man and technique is unavoidable, and that technical action necessarily results in a determined result.[6] This characterization has led some to dismiss Ellul’s philosophy as “technological determinism.” Winner rejects that Ellul commits to determinism, and finds utility in this approach – that of autonomous technology – when he presents Ellul’s vision “that technology is somehow out of control by human agency.”[7] In this view, “far from being controlled by the desired and rational ends of human beings, technology in a real sense now governs its own course, speed, and destination.”[8] Ellul argued that “there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy.”[9] (more…)

One Response to “On Technology and Human Agency”

  1. Leapfroglog

    […] On Technology and Human Agency | | Ben BrucatoBen Brucato […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *