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A reader recently sent me this old Calvin and Hobbes strip.

“The machine imposes the necessity for collective effort and widens its range. To the extent that men have escaped the control of nature they must submit to the control of society.” Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934

“These new recording and reproducing devices have confused the mind and defied selective use … If these inventions have so far made monkeys of us, it is because we are still monkeys.” Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934

“Every modern man expresses his will to power in records he has not established himself.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954

“The written word is just a mummy whose wrappings must be removed someday—not to discover a few bones, but to breathe life into it again.” Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, 1981

“Images once were illustrations of a text. Now the text has become the explanation of the images.” Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, 1981

“It will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane, for everything will be ordered, and the stains of human passion will be lost amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing more to lose and nothing to win.” Jacques

“Workers are losing power as automation destroys the unions. Automation-computerization means an expropriation of knowledge from the working class and therefore a reduction of its power in collective bargaining.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 1988

“It now seems impossible to do anything without the advice and report of an expert.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 1988

“Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954

“While much good came through invention, much invention came irrespective of the good.” Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934

“We have no freedom face-to-face with technique, for freedom here means the freedom to say yes or no. But who can say no to space probes or genetic engineering?” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 1988

“Technique reigns alone, a blind force and more clear-sighted than the best human intelligence.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954

“What man claims as freedom is no more than independence, and confusion of the two is the atrocious illusion under which we have lived for the last two centuries.” Jacques Ellul, The Ethics of Freedom, 1973

“Let us stop considering other people as bearers of lethal spiritual and moral germs, in order to see them as they are: people materially like us.” Jacques Ellul, “Political Realism,” 1947

“‘Fact’ having become a veritable god, it is by the factual consequences that we calculate the value of an action. What matters now is no longer the right or the true or the beautiful, but the fact.” Jacques Ellul, “Political Realism,” 1947

“One can no longer even say that the end justifies the means, for within realism there is no longer an end; there is only the fact that the means succeed and that is all.” Jacques Ellul, “Political Realism,” 1947

“One can perfectly modify economic life and its regime from top to bottom without changing in the slightest the fundamental structures of society.” Jacques Ellul, “Needed: A New Karl Marx!” 1947

“Political and economic problems, even in their most abstract aspect, are never purely technical problems. There always enters a human element that somehow skews the system.” Jacques Ellul, “Needed: A New Karl Marx!” 1947

Technological neutrality is just drilled into modern heads like a cult catechism. "It's just a tool, it's all about how you use it." No. Neil Postman demolished this idea 40 years ago. Our creations have implicit value judgments built into them. Those judgments shape YOU.