By Kevin A. Carson
SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PAUL+GOODMAN
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Jacques Ellul’s “Anti-Democratic Economy:” Persuading Citizens and Consumers in the Information Society
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
Artur Alves
Jacques Ellul's thoughts on the increasingly conspicuous role of persuasion techniques bring to the fore the persuasive and normative effects of new communication techniques at the core of contemporary consumer/citizen culture, as well as the limits of that instrumental stance towards mediated human communication. By drawing insights from authors who shared some of Ellul's concerns, such as Frankfurt School theorists, Vance Packard and Ivan Illich, this paper explores this “normative invasion” of human life by technique as a feature of contemporary information technology politics, specifically in (1) the historical context of normative and material technological colonization, and (2) the intertwining of propaganda and information warfare in the current reshaping of information politics.
Publication Date: Mar 14, 2014
Publication Name: tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
Artur Alves
Jacques Ellul's thoughts on the increasingly conspicuous role of persuasion techniques bring to the fore the persuasive and normative effects of new communication techniques at the core of contemporary consumer/citizen culture, as well as the limits of that instrumental stance towards mediated human communication. By drawing insights from authors who shared some of Ellul's concerns, such as Frankfurt School theorists, Vance Packard and Ivan Illich, this paper explores this “normative invasion” of human life by technique as a feature of contemporary information technology politics, specifically in (1) the historical context of normative and material technological colonization, and (2) the intertwining of propaganda and information warfare in the current reshaping of information politics.
Publication Date: Mar 14, 2014
Publication Name: tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
On Freedom, Love, and Power
By Jacques Ellul. Ed./trans. Willem H. Vanderburg
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
247 pp. ISBN 978-1-4426-1117-7
Reviewed by Ben Kautzer
Though marginalized in certain academic circles, Jacques Ellul (1912-1994)
undoubtedly remains one of the most significant social critics of the 20th
century. A prolific writer, Ellul produced 48 books and well over 600 articles in which he critiqued the hegemonic power of technology in contemporary society and its corrosive impact on human life, culture, ecology, and religious faith.
Fueled by a reductive scientism and undergirded by a mythos of insatiable progress, modernity has inaugurated a seismic shift towards what Ellul calls
la technique
—an unquestioned technical totality that underlies, orients, and mediates all human relationships with others and the environment. As the secular religion of the modern age,technique, argues Ellul, has indeed become our new environment—the life milieu of humanity.
Fueled by a reductive scientism and undergirded by a mythos of insatiable progress, modernity has inaugurated a seismic shift towards what Ellul calls
la technique
—an unquestioned technical totality that underlies, orients, and mediates all human relationships with others and the environment. As the secular religion of the modern age,technique, argues Ellul, has indeed become our new environment—the life milieu of humanity.
His iconoclastic work in history, sociology, politics, and theology seeks to call into question the pervasiveness of this technological mindset and its implications for our ability to conceive human flourishing (in both the physical and spiritual sense of the word).
It should come as no surprise that Ellul’s work provided a foundational point of departure for questions Ivan Illich wrestled with throughout his own life.
It should come as no surprise that Ellul’s work provided a foundational point of departure for questions Ivan Illich wrestled with throughout his own life.
ON THE TECHNOLOGY FETISH IN EDUCATION: ELLUL,
BAUDRILLARD, AND THE END OF HUMANITY
Deron Boyles
Georgia State University
Kip Kline
Lewis University
Schools continue to purchase and install machines
and practices from the world of communications technology. In turn, students
and teachers are purported to be more “connected,” and this connectivity is
widely viewed as having a positive influence on teaching and learning. In this
essay, however, we argue that not only are these claims about better teaching
and learning specious, but that the largely unreflective and zealous pursuit of
new technologies by schools amounts to an acceptance of technological
determinism and an adoption of a set of non-neutral ontological assumptions.
Human interaction is always interpreted, but the mitigation of technology
raises important questions about the
assumed neutrality of “technological innovation.”
Evan
Williams, a founder of Twitter, recently claimed that “the internet is broken.”
His chief concerns include the degree to which
Facebook live streams suicides, Twitter trolls attack people with abandon, and
“news links” lead to falsehoods. The assault on truth, we argue, is a direct
result of one of Williams's other inventions: the blog. Blogs allowed
narcissistic posting of virtually anything, resulting, on Williams’s own admission,
in a culture of “extremes.”
The solution, for Williams, is not to reposition
humanity as central to deliberation, but to shift reality to a consumer-pay
model for content access. Ashe puts it:Ad-driven systems can only reward
attention.
They can't reward the right answer. Consumer-paid
systems can. They can reward value. The inevitable solution: People will have to
pay for quality content.
Per Liam Mitchell, the preponderance of new
communications technology has as a central belief the confluence of capitalism,
collectivism, and technological determinism. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said in
2013 that “The real goal is to connect everyone in the world and help people
map out everything that there is.” According to Mitchell, “At best, this ideology
is naive. At worst, it is helping to create a transnational, colonial,
capitalist subject who is alienated from the product of their
production/consumption, disillusioned with their mode of self – representation, and ironically disconnected
from their friends.”
More recently, in a twist on Mitchell’s concern, The
New York Times highlighted a North Dakota
teacher, Kayla Delzer, who enacts Silicon
Valley’s penchant for all things techno-education.
She is a “teacher influencer” who has her own
brand and financially benefits from referrals to high-tech firms and education entrepreneurs. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the
teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her
classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to
thousands of teachers who follow her on social media.
As she puts it, “I will embed it [new
technologies] in my brand every day.” The
commercial and ethical issues this raises are
only indicative of the (logical?)consequences that follow from technophilia run
amok.While it would be easy for us to critique the mercantile elements pervading
technological “innovations,” they are not the focus of this paper.
Instead, we utilize Williams’assumptions and
Zuckerberg’s ontology as indicative of the most recent instantiation of
what Jacques Ellul called “technique”and what Jean Baudrillard considered
simulated communication and the death of the real.
The paper proceeds in three parts: 1) elucidating
Ellul’s seven necessary conditions of and for “technique;” 2) reconsidering
Baudrillard’s simulation theory; and 3) positioning both theorists’ arguments in
a revised claim about the role of humanity in a world of ubiquitous technology.
Implications for a more critical understanding of education are explored to
develop counter narratives to challenge the overwhelming influence of technique
and simulation
Theorizing student activism in and beyond the 20th century: the contribution of Philip G. Altbach
Student Engagement in Europe: Society, Higher Education and Student Governance, 2015
Publication Date: 2015
Publication Name: Student Engagement in Europe: Society, Higher Education and Student Governance
www.thierryluescher.net www.africanminds.org.za www.jsaa.ac.za www.ufs.ac.za www.chet.org.za
Why We Fight: Resisting the Incursion of Free-Market Technique in US Higher Education (An Educator’s Manifesto)
Peter K Fallon
Abstract
Higher education in the United States of America over the last few decades has been undergoing an undeniably profound shift; in form, in philosophy, in mission, in goals. This paper seeks to describe that shift and identify the factors that have directed it, reshaped the structure of US higher education, and reframed our attitudes, beliefs and expectations about it.
It is a fundamental hypothesis and assumption of this paper that technique and the values of the technological society have come to dominate academia and wield the same power there as they do in (what I will call) “the secular world.” The adoption of technical values in higher education must result in academia being reduced to a mere adjunct of the technological society, a seminary of the technical belief system.
It is an assumption of this paper that both practical and liberal knowledge are of equal value and both should be seen as an appropriate end. But the paper also claims that one of the two, in fact, is disappearing.
The paper uses both the theories of Jacques Ellul (as tools of critical analysis of the surveyed data) and his theology (to evaluate the data, draw conclusions, and suggest approaches to understanding – and living with – the stated problem).
Peter K Fallon
Roosevelt University
Faculty Member
Peter K. Fallon is Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is the author of three books
RELATED
Universities between the State and the Market. Development Policy, Commercialization and Liberalization of Higher Education.
Peter K Fallon
Abstract
Higher education in the United States of America over the last few decades has been undergoing an undeniably profound shift; in form, in philosophy, in mission, in goals. This paper seeks to describe that shift and identify the factors that have directed it, reshaped the structure of US higher education, and reframed our attitudes, beliefs and expectations about it.
It is a fundamental hypothesis and assumption of this paper that technique and the values of the technological society have come to dominate academia and wield the same power there as they do in (what I will call) “the secular world.” The adoption of technical values in higher education must result in academia being reduced to a mere adjunct of the technological society, a seminary of the technical belief system.
It is an assumption of this paper that both practical and liberal knowledge are of equal value and both should be seen as an appropriate end. But the paper also claims that one of the two, in fact, is disappearing.
The paper uses both the theories of Jacques Ellul (as tools of critical analysis of the surveyed data) and his theology (to evaluate the data, draw conclusions, and suggest approaches to understanding – and living with – the stated problem).
Peter K Fallon
Roosevelt University
Faculty Member
Peter K. Fallon is Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is the author of three books
RELATED
Universities between the State and the Market. Development Policy, Commercialization and Liberalization of Higher Education.
Ecological Disaster & Jacques Ellul's Theological Vision
Paul Tyson and Matthew John Paul Tan
THE COMMON CAUSE IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY: Nikolai Federov and Jacques Ellul on Technology, Ecology, and Design
Theodore Dedon
The future (and the now) according to Jacques Ellul: Deterministic or mindful?
Paul Tyson and Matthew John Paul Tan
THE COMMON CAUSE IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY: Nikolai Federov and Jacques Ellul on Technology, Ecology, and Design
Theodore Dedon
The future (and the now) according to Jacques Ellul: Deterministic or mindful?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)