THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY. By Jacques Ellul. Translated from the French by John Wilkinson. With an Introduction by Robert K. Merton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. 449 pp. $10.95

Social Forces ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Vance
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society

1971 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Mitcham ◽  
Robert Mackey ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Technological Society ◽  
Jacques Ellul

The Rise of the Electrophorus

2011 ◽  
pp. 401-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katina Michael ◽  
M.G. Michael
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Sociotechnical Systems ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Jacques Ellul ◽  
Automatic Teller Machines ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Human Nervous System

When Jacques Ellul (1964, p. 432) predicted the use of “electronic banks” in his book, The Technological Society, he was not referring to the computerization of financial institutions or the use of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs). Rather it was in the context of the possibility of the dawn of a new entity- the coupling of man and machine. Ellul was predicting that one day knowledge would be accumulated in electronic banks and “transmitted directly to the human nervous system by means of coded electronic messages… [w]hat is needed will pass directly from the machine to the brain without going through consciousness…” As unbelievable as this man-machine complex may have sounded at the time, forty years on visionaries are still predicting that such scenarios will be possible by the turn of the twentysecond century. A large proportion of these visionaries are cyberneticists. Cybernetics is the study of nervous system controls in the brain as a basis for developing communications and controls in sociotechnical systems.

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