In the middle of last century, Jaquces Ellul wrote a book describing the Technological Society. Reading through this text today, it shows his prediction of what a highly technological society looks like was broadly correct.
A technological society is one which relies on a technical state to function. A society with undeveloped technology usually relies on local leadership linked into a ruling class. Whereas a technological society has centralised processes run by technicians.
Technology doesn’t just mean gadgetry, but also legal beaurcratic processes, like planning law or the tax code. In my opinion, anything which augments and abstracts our experience of objective reality is a form of technology. This not only includes physical tools, but also legal, cultural, relational, theological and philosophical ones too.
Some technologies create more abstraction than others. So a shovel is probably a first order of abstraction, while an automated robot which moves soil is by far, many orders of abstraction above that.
Eventually, the technological society weaves all these processes together into one single process, which verges on totalitarianism. At this point, there is nothing outside the ‘Process’ and everything is within it.
When we look at the current Western world, the Internet has helped to centralise societies under the purview of the state and its technicians. This may give the impression of greater efficiency, but as technological process cannot take into account all the potential threats to a system, then the more a society relies on a centralised process, the more it becomes unbalanced.
Another major issue is when the processes become too large for one person to fully comprehend. Then the technicians not only have to trust technicians in the other parts of the process, but they have to have faith the process is stable.
Some people think that this could all be run by Artificial Intelligence, and I agree that this could increase the stability of the system, but then a technician still needs to manage the AI. And if the AI becomes too complex for a single group of technicians to support, then we return to the problem of over-complexity.
Another point to consider is if the technicians are not competent enough to manage changes in the processes, then again it means the system can’t adapt and therefore moves towards instability.
Civilisation and technology go hand in hand. We can’t have a civilisation without centralised technical processes and equally technology will always tends toward civilisation. When we look at all the great civilisations in history, there are always technological advancements which occur at the same time and anre integrated into the society. Think especially of the Roman and British Empires. Both heavily relied on technological advances, not just physical ones, but legal innovations too.
We can either try and turn back the clock and embrace some form of Amish existence, or we can find a suitable way forward through the problems of living in a technological society.
Anglo-Futurism understands that if we want to live in a society with technology, even limited technology, we need to create an effective framework to manage it.
The philosophy behind Anglo-Futurism would suggest we need the foundations of the framework rooted in the wisdom traditions of the English. Rather than using modern management speak, that if anything, are slogans developed from fashionable sociological and psychological ideas. We should look at proverbs like ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ or ‘a stitch in time, saves nine’.
Both of these are rooted in ancient Anglo tradition and have been tested through centuries. They are far more reliable and effective than the modern business slogans.
We could also use Anglo-Futurism’s Five Pillars as developed by Benjamin De Rebel. Asking the question, ‘How does a new technological process work with the Pillars, especially competency, nuclear families (local communities) and order*.
A framework can be developed from these Pillars and the Anglo wisdom tradition, which then could limit the uncontrolled growth of technology. And therefore curb its dangerous effects.
*The Five Pillars include:
Competency
Housing
Nuclear Family
Order
Technology
Another one to look at is Stafford Beer. He’s like the opposite of Ellul, the person he was complaining about. A technician misguidedly making the system even worse.
Corporations and governments used all his cybernetic ideas to become even more efficient but also cold, total and alienating.
He’s an example of what we want to avoid.