A Warning Against the All-Encompassing Power of Technology

Fifty years ago French sociologist/theologian Jacques Ellul warned that technology, in spite of its many lauded gifts, also presented great dangers. Its most important threat was its development into the totality of an unremittingly encompassing milieu. He realized that human beings would become immersed in, and completely subjected to, an omnipotence made possible by the intertwining of technology, money, politics, and other forces.

He protested that it would be vanity to pretend that this monolithic technical world could be checked or guided, for people would discover that they were…