JACQUES ELLUL

He was a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist and Christian anarchist.

Ellul authorized 58 books and more than a thousand articles. In 1964 his book The
Technological Society was published, in which he gave characteristics of the
modern technology which makes efficiency a necessity.

"We are rapidly approaching the time when there will no longer be any natural
environment at all" (Ellul, p. 79).

RATIONALITY

It is use of mathematical calculations, systematization, creation of standards

The rationality of technique enforces logical and mechanical organization
through division of labor, the setting of production standards, etc. An example
can be the present business model which is highly dependent on supply chain
management and quality control.

ARTIFICIALITY

According to Ellul, technique is opposed to nature. It results in the creation of

an artificial world which is radically different from the natural world

Example; Hydroelectric installations take waterfalls and lead them into

conduits, so the technique absorbs the nature.

AUTOMATISM

Automatism is “The one best way“- max yield with least effort. It refers to the
technique becoming self-directed. According to this factor everything has been
measured and calculated mathematically so that the method which has been
decided is satisfactory from both rational and practical point of view, that
method is considered most efficient of all.

EFFICIENCY

It refers to maximum yield with the least amount of effort.

 ELIMINATION OF VARIABILITY

As the name suggests this characteristic refers to elimination of variance in

process and to make the process consistent.

UNETHICAL EXPERIMENTS
Science and technology despite its benefits hasn’t been all that ethical. There
have been some extremely unethical and mind-blowing practices throughout
history by different scientists, researchers and agencies.

PRIVATE EXPERIMENTS

 In 1874, Mary Rafferty, an Irish servant woman, came to Dr. Roberts

Bartholow of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati for treatment of
her cancer. Seeing a research opportunity, he cut open her head, and
inserted needle electrodes into her exposed brain matter.
 In 1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth performed spinal taps on 29 young children,
without the knowledge or consent of their parents, at the Children's
Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to discover whether doing so would be
harmful
 Researchers in the United States have performed thousands of human
radiation experiments to determine the effects of atomic radiation and
radioactive contamination on the human body, generally on people who
were poor, sick, or powerless. Most of these tests were performed, funded,
or supervised by the United States military, Atomic Energy Commission, or
various other US federal government agencies, involving things like feeding
radioactive food to mentally disabled children or inserting radium rods into
the noses of schoolchildren to study effects of radioactive fallout.
 Between 1946 and 1947, researchers at the University of Rochester
injected uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7
micrograms per kilogram of body weight into six people to study how much
uranium their kidneys could tolerate before becoming damaged.
 GOVERNMENT FUNDED EXPERIMENTS
The CIA and Mi5 have held a controversial position throughout history.
They have carried on numerous unethical and illegal experiments.
The following is an extract from an authentic CIA document:
“Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure
to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American
public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical
and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and
diplomatic circles ...”
— 1957 CIA Inspector General Report

 The United States government funded and performed numerous

psychological experiments, especially during the Cold War era including
effective torture and interrogation techniques , truth Serum experiments,
lethal assassination poison, etc. Following are some unethical practices of
1. Sarin is a lethal nerve agent. Experiment was conducted on military
volunteers in Britain during cold. Subjects were given masks and a
soft cloth was wrapped around their arms and small drops of Sarin
were dropped on their arms to get it into their body, just after a
while they were breathless, sweating and left the room in horror as
soon as the experiment got over
It was conducted to determine minimum lethal dosage for a human
body.
2. LSD was experimented by CIA during cold war which was used to
soften enemies for interrogation to leak information easily. It was
also used in the mind control program launched by CIA. These tests
violated basic common sense and medical ethics. Test subjects were
injected with LSD and helments attached with cassette players were
locked to their heads making them listen to statements over and
over again accompanied by electrical shocks to rub their memory.
The test subjects were mainly street people, black Americans, drug
addicts & prisoners, etc
3. The Manchurian candidate program used hypnosis as a basic
technique for mind control, the agencies use to create assassins
using hypnosis, whose Manchurian state (hypnotized state) was
triggered through a code, which could be e.g a Spades card, polka dot
designs (as assumed to be used in Robert Kennedy assassination).
The main advantage of these candidates was that they did not
remember what they had done making them immune to any sorts of
investigation techniques.